Sleepless
Discovering the Power of the Night Self
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'Sleepless has changed how I feel about sleep . . . I was captivated' The Times, Book of the Week
'This book will inspire you to get up, light a candle, and experience your own Night Self' Financial Times
'An antidote to sleep zealotry' New Scientist
THE NIGHT SELF IS: CREATIVE. CURIOUS. VULNERABLE. ENCHANTED. COURAGEOUS.
In the winter of 2020, Annabel Abbs experienced a series of bereavements. As she grieved, she kept busy by day, but at night sleep eluded her. And yet her sleeplessness led to a profound and unexpected discovery: her Night Self.
As the night transformed into a place of creativity and liberation, Annabel found she wasn't alone. From the radical fifteenth-century philosopher Laura Cereta and subversive artist Louise Bourgeois, to Virginia Woolf and the activist Peace Pilgrim, women have long found sanctuary, inspiration and courage in darkness.
Drawing on the latest science, which shows we are more imaginative, open-minded and reflective at night, Annabel set out to discover the potential of her Night Self. Sleepless follows her journey, from midnight hikes to starlit swims, from Singapore, the brightest city on Earth, to the darkest corner of the Arctic Circle, and finally to that most elusive of places - sleep.
A moving, revelatory voyage into the dark, Sleepless invites us to feel less anxious about our sleep, and to embrace the possibilities of the night.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In the wake of three unexpected bereavements, Annabel Abbs was expecting the insomnia that befell her as she balanced the emotional taxations of her grief with the practical ones which consumed her daytime hours. Unexpectedly though, her nights did not come with the same feeling of frustration and failure she had experienced during previous wakeful spells, leading to the discovery and embrace of her “Night Self” and the beginnings of a project that culminated in Sleepless. A historical and scientific exploration of sleep and darkness as much as an autobiographical one, Sleepless is a memoir of Abbs’ new understanding of the brain and the body at night, patterned against the stories of women ranging from a 15th-century Italian feminist to Daphne du Maurier, all of whom harnessed their altered night-time brain chemistry and channelled it into pursuits that Abbs suspects their “Day Self” would have dismissed, or perhaps not considered viable at all. Given the health implications of long-term insomnia, Abbs is careful not to frame it as a desirable state, but Sleepless certainly presents enough of an argument for the benefits to be exploited from an otherwise detrimental situation. Persuasively written, with both anecdotal and research evidence to back her reappraisal of sleeplessness as ally not enemy, this is essential reading for anyone who finds the peace of slumber to be elusive.
