![]() While at first, the individual fragments may seem somewhat unconnected, there is a sort of framing device at work here. Soon the boats would be gathered in, ferries roped to the dock. Already the summer seemed to be passing away. A steamy haze blurred the lines of the hills. Foreigners under the arcades, in the basket shops. The phlox bloomed in its faded purples on the hillside, phallic pines. ![]() ![]() When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist. The writing has a poetic quality, rich with vivid images with the ability to linger in the mind. Instead, we are presented with a series of fragments from a woman’s life, the recollections of journeys undertaken, of people encountered and situations observed. Like Speedboat, Hardwick’s book doesn’t follow a conventional narrative arc nor does it possess a noticeable plot as such. In terms of style and form, the closest comparison I can think of is Renata Adler’s Speedboat, a wonderful book that blew me away with its shimmering vignettes and episodes from the narrator’s life. It’s a difficult book to describe – part fiction, part memoir, Sleepless Nights blurs the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights has been sitting there for some time, patiently waiting for its moment in the sun (or maybe I should say ‘the glow of autumn’ as we are in October now). Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have been trying to read from my shelves over the past year or so, limiting the acquisition of ‘new’ books in favour of reading older titles from my TBR.
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