Sleepless Nights (New York Review Books Classics)
by Elizabeth Hardwick
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of Sleepless Nights.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 119)
recommends it for:
Kelsey Hays; Krestyna Lypen; Ryan Chapmen
A novel in tangents, love’s nuances, and the effects of expectation, Sleepless Nights is fragmentary in its telling; but complete in its perfection. Joan Didion described it best when she referred to it as “less a ‘story about’ or ‘of’ life than a shattered meditation on it.” The language is poetic and elliptical and every word feels in perfect harmony with the ones that follow. A few favorites…
“A genuine nihilism; genuine, look twice. Infatuated glances saying, Beautiful b...more
“A genuine nihilism; genuine, look twice. Infatuated glances saying, Beautiful b...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
Much has been made of the success of this book as a genre-bender (highly autobiographical, yet a novel, yet essay-like), but what interested me most, and drove me to finish it in one night, was Hardwick's sharp observations of her characters and the running theme of the upheavals love makes on a life, and the quietness you're left in afterward. The writing bothered me a little at first, since it tended toward the abstract, and because the story is described as that of a woman looking back on her...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in October, 2006
recommends it for:
Sure, it is a good quick read
In this "novel," Hardwick writes a series of highly autobiographical vignettes tied together by... well nothing except her voice. The prose is, for the most part, excellent and this is a great book to pick up and read for a few pages to get your juices flowing. However, reading all these mostly unrelated fragments together gets repetitive and leaves you wanting something a little more coherent. If its going to be this loose and thin, why not just make it a series of prose poems instead...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 2007
this book blew my mind. released as a novel, but tricky in the same way "feather on the breath of god" is - definitely playing with the genre, commenting on it. and the writing is just... wow. no plot, really, but definitely a sense of story and movement; a woman is looking back on her life, and the content shifts and changes as memory does, seemingly without reason but in hindsight with accumulating association and meaning. such a close observer, and an exacting wordsmith.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2007
LOVED IT! Little pieces of memory that are always beautiful but not always chronologically cohesive. So so good, the descriptions are detailed and poetic.
I also enjoy the cover. Look at it. Of course you want to read this book (preferably in a shabby paint-chipped apartment in Greenwich Village, with bad heat, blankets piled upon you, and coffee in hand).
I also enjoy the cover. Look at it. Of course you want to read this book (preferably in a shabby paint-chipped apartment in Greenwich Village, with bad heat, blankets piled upon you, and coffee in hand).
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Hardwick died last year and I hadn't yet finished this gem of a novel I'd picked up in 2004. I took the opportunity to remember why Lowell's better half should be remembered in her own right. Memory, music, loneliness and youth in New York City. Need I say more?
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
recommended to Noreen by:
read it for the Literariansrecommends it for: no one
I know I should say I loved this book--Elizabeth Hardwick is such an important writer of criticism and a key figure in the New York literary world. But I hated it. HATED IT. Way too precious and contrived. What can I say; I'm a philistine, I guess . . .
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
hartwick is an excellent writer. great imagery and vivid portraits, but the lack of plot made this rather short book hard to get through. very disjointed. in the end, the life she portrays isnt all that different our exciting. felt something lacking.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
eh. she's a good writer, but the lack of story or plot made it hard for me to sustain interest.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
I posted about this book on my Reading Diary
http://blogdelivre.blogspot.co...
http://blogdelivre.blogspot.co...
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2000
Winner of the 2000 Clifton Fadiman Medal.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.89 (64 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.89 (64 ratings) number of reviews: 14popular shelves
other editions
quote
""His curiosity flamed over a word, an adjective, over the seductiveness of the fact that I was taking down a volume of Thomas Mann from the
library shelves. Eros has a thousand friends.""
more quotes »