Insomnia

by Marina Benjamin

Insomnia is on the rise. More than a third of all adults report experiencing it, with the figure climbing steeply among those over sixty-five. Marina Benjamin takes on her personal experience of the condition--her struggles with it, her insomniac highs, and her dawning awareness that states of sleeplessness grant us valuable insights into the workings of our unconscious minds. Although insomnia is rarely entirely welcome, Benjamin treats it less as an affliction than as an encounter that she engages with and plumbs. She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, of how we perceive darkness.

Along the way, Insomnia trips through illuminating material from literature, art, philosophy, psychology, pop culture, and more. Benjamin pays particular attention to the relationship between women and sleep--Penelope up all night, unraveling her day's weaving for Odysseus; the Pre-Raphaelite artists' depictions of deeply sleeping women; and the worries that keep contemporary females awake.

Insomnia is an intense, lyrical, witty, and humane exploration of a state we too often consider only superficially. "This is the song of insomnia, and I shall sing it," Marina Benjamin declares.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Science, Audiobook, Psychology, Health, Essays

133 pages, Hardcover

First published October 29, 2018

About the author

Marina Benjamin worked as a journalist before turning to non-fiction and, later, memoir. She has served as arts editor of the New Statesman and deputy arts editor of the Evening Standard and has written features and book reviews for most of the broadsheet papers. Her first book Living at the End of the World (1998) looked at the mass psychology of millenarians. Rocket Dreams (2003), an offbeat elegy to the end of the space age, is at the same time a story about coming of age in the 1970s, while Last Days in Babylon (2007) blends memoir, political commentary and travelogue to explore the story of the Jews of Iraq.
These days, Marina works as senior editor at the digital magazine Aeon. She teaches regular life writing and creative non-fiction courses for Arvon, and runs workshops for graduate students and staff as an RLF Consultant Fellow. In recent years she has doubled down on her commitment to exploring what memoir can do, with a modern take on the essay form in The Middlepause (2016) – a personal interrogation of what it means to be middle aged. Her new memoir, Insomnia – part confession, part poetic exploration and part philosophical reflection – is published in 2018. She lives in London with her husband, teenager and dog.

Reviews

[Nat K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insomnia (noun)
A habitual sleeplessness or inability to sleep. It comes to us from the Latin ’insomnius’, meaning ‘without sleep’.

Insomnia. One word. Eight letters. So much weight behind these four consonants and four vowels.

Insomnia is not just about the lack of sleep. It pervades a person’s entire being. Both when awake and when trying to sleep. The longing for it. The active pursuit of sleep. Kind of like the dog-chasing-tail scenario. The harder you pursue something, the more it eludes you.

”When I am up at night, the world takes on a different hue. It is quieter and closer, and there are textures of the dark I have begun paying attention to…"

This is not a self-help book that will provide you with tips’n’tricks to get your eight hours of Zzzzzzs. Instead it’s a thoughtful, honest, meandering insight into how it feels to be wide awake, when it seems that rest of the world is deep in blissful slumber.

Elements of mythology (Penelope and Odysseus), classics (such as Robinsoe Crusoe and Gilgamesh) and some clinical and scientific studies are thrown into the mix. What happens to both people and animals when they are sleep deprived? Rest, repair, renewal. These are the processes that occur while asleep. So how do we achieve those if the sandman proves elusive?

Of course a book about sleep would be incomplete if Oliver Sacks did not get a mention (he does). It goes without saying his work with “sleeping sickness” patients and the book about it, Awakenings, is an incredible insight into the delicacy of our minds. And how terribly important it is for our minds to be free, and allowed to replenish, which can’t be done without decent sleep.

Herr Freud also gets a mention due to his psychoanalysis-dream work, as does Dr Carl Jung, who was a follower of Freud, who then developed his own dream and sleep theories.

“Insomnia, then, is not just a state of sleeplessness, a matter of negatives. It involves the active pursuit of sleep. It is a state of longing.”

Thoughts that keep us up way too long, into the wee small hours, when sleep is proving elusive. Fragments of memories. People we’ve known. Places we’ve been. Tasks to be completed, that we will not do in daylight hours. Tick. They're all mentioned here. In their confoundedness. Pondering, pondering.

What overly complex creatures we are! Why can’t we simply fall asleep at the drop of a hat, as our animal friends are able to?

”I read for an hour, make myself a cup of tea, and sit with the dog. We stare at each other with big cow eyes. And I marvel at his animal knack for sleep. Curling in beside me on the sofa, he’s out within minutes…”

Then there are lighter parts, where Ms Benjamin talks about her travels over the years with her husband. The various beds they’ve slept in, how their sleep patterns, both as individuals and as partners, have changed. There are references to paintings, and art. This book has all sorts of tangents, which was a delightful mix to me.

For anyone who is either a perpetual insomniac, or the occasional club member, you’ll find something in this little book that you recognize about yourself, and that speaks to you.

Perhaps this book is most succinctly summed up by this telling line (which I adore, as it is so true):
”Insomnia is the thief of my repose and demon lover both.”

This book was beautifully read by the Author, which made it even more personal and relevant. Big shout out to Randwick City Library for having such a wonderful selection of audio titles to choose from.

3.5⭐ This is quite gorgeous.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When I think of insomnia's wayward rhythms what I picture is this: gaudy insomnia with its wide lapels and toothy grin is the last groover on the dance floor, still going at it after everyone has collapsed in a heap or gone home...."

This brilliant mix of memoir, mythology, literature and science is a meditation on too many sleepless nights. Plus the cover sparkles!

I spoke about my first experience with this book on Episode 135 of the Reading Envy Podcast

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy!

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

We’ve all had those nights when we wake up in some dark hour and can’t get back to sleep no matter what method we use to try to trick ourselves back into unconsciousness. I’ve found watching a good nature or outer space programme can often lull me, but sometimes nothing works. Although I occasionally go through periods when sleeplessness plagues me night after night leaving me exhausted and bleary-eyed throughout the workday, I’ve never considered it to be a serious or chronic problem. But other people experience more severe cases that are seriously debilitating – such as my partner who has tried many different treatments.

Most books about insomnia offer advice or methods for overcoming it, but what I appreciate so much about Marina Benjamin’s short, impactful and beautifully-written book “Insomnia” is that she approaches the condition from a more philosophical point of view. It’s a deeply personal account because she’s someone who has suffered from insomnia for years and tried just about every scheme out there to sleep better. But rather than write a guidebook she offers a different kind of solace in how we’re all unified by sleep or the lack of it. She draws upon references from mythology, psychology, art and literature to illuminate how we often have an uneasy relationship with our night time selves.

Read my full review of Insomnia by Marina Benjamin on LonesomeReader

[Lotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunningly written, thoughtful meditation on sleep and the absence of it. Marina Benjamin muses on how insomnia affects our creativity and relationships and how it fundamentally shifts our view of the world around us. She mixes personal stories with cultural analyses of portrayals of insomnia, slipping in and out of both modes of thinking about this issue in a way that I really like in this kind of semi-personal/semi-analytical non-fiction. In this case though, I sometimes wished we would've stayed more in Marina Benjamin's own life. As someone who struggles with insomnia herself, I found the more philosophical musings interesting, but I also wanted to know more about the author herself and how insomnia has affected her — and we definitely got glimpses of that in this, but I guess I wanted more. Luckily, I just found out that a memoir by Samantha Harvey (The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping) that has just come out has a very similar theme and seems to focus more on the personal aspects of insomnia, so I'll definitely be reading that.

[Nicolás Tauriani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este ensayo tiene una dinámica maravillosa que atraviesa muchas disciplinas: la historia, la filosofía, la ciencia, la literatura; y además lo hace con una marcada impronta auto referencial, o de la literatura del yo, por lo que todo se vuelve muy personal y accesible para el lector.

Qué buenos libros y traducciones nos está dando Chai Editora!

[C.M. Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2014 I had my absolute worst bout of insomnia. It lasted months. In that time I tried pretty much every "this will help you sleep" routine/supplement/drug known to man. I also read a lot of books about it. I hadn't read a book about insomnia in over four years. And with that pretty cover...I couldn't resist temptation.

I want to start by saying this middle of the road rating has a lot to do with my aversion towards purple prose. Am I guilty of it from time to time? Probably. I just can't stand reading it (most of the time). I mean...if it's sporadic and spaced out, I can handle it. Hell, if you put chapters between one purple instance and the next...I might even come to appreciate it. However, reading beautiful, lyrical writing in this book prevented me from relating in certain places. When I was lying awake at 3 a.m. for the 5th night in a row I wasn't considering "the gently shifting penumbra that heralds dawn." I was thinking "f*ck this sh*t."

There were other parts where the writing was much more relatable, though. When she expresses jealousy over her dog and other animals who find sleep so easily. When I had insomnia I resented everything and everyone who could sleep. I resented things that didn't need sleep. I probably resented plants. When she likens her racing mind to a Formula One driver tearing up asphalt. When she writes things like this...

"In the grip of insomnia I am constitutionally inconsolable."

Yup.

It was in the crazy little details that I related the most. Like the earplugs passage. It's like, okay, I've successfully muted birds chirping/man snoring/etc, but what about the whooshing sound in my inner ear?

I also learned quite a bit from Marina Benjamin. I knew nothing about "choleric personality" prior to this book. Turns out I check the ravenously hungry, wiry, impatient, hot-blooded boxes of this "type" that is prone to sleeplessness. Oh, and I learned about a type of plant I never knew existed...and now kind of want to find.

I wasn't into the narrative straying around and veering off into wonderland-like states (which in actuality might have been a double entendre for semi-lucid/in limbo, dreams/thoughts that slip across the sleep deprived's mind when they're just laying there.) I have no idea how we got from Greek gods, to slavery, to philosophers...just topic jumping like crazy. The weird stuff didn't click. When Zzz was introduced I had no idea who he represented. Her husband? Lover? A different side of herself? Is Zzz a metaphor for the sleeping word she has an indignant relationship with? These are the things you have to wonder when a book is written unconventionally. You leave not knowing if it was a man or a metaphor. And this book is unconventional in the way it meanders, doesn't really have paragraphs or chapters, and doesn't appear to hold fast to any rule of writing. Which is fine. If you like that sort of thing.

If you suffer from insomnia, you'd probably appreciate this book (to some extent). If you want to better understand insomnia, this book can shed a unique light (to some extent). I'd say you'd be more apt to fully enjoy this book if you are into lyrical prose and alternative writing styles.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When you cannot get sleep you fall in love with sleep, because desire (thank you, Lacan) is born out of lack. Perhaps there is an inverse relationship here, between the degree of lack and the corresponding degree of love. How much do I love sleep, I wonder. And can sleep love me back? The medieval Islamic poet Rumi seemed to think the relationship might be reciprocal. In ‘The Milk of Millennia’ he wrote: ‘every human being streams at night into the loving nowhere.’ I find it comforting to think that we might stream beyond our bedroom walls at night, like a crystalline liquid (or like data), as though our avatars were flowing toward, then alongside those of others in surging formation while our bodies were at rest. I find it reassuring that nowhere can be a loving place. Although when I am revving in the night hours, Nowhere does not feel especially loving.”

This book is fucking fantastic. I will read it many, many more times in this life.

[Sana]

'She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, of how we perceive darkness.'

Behold, a book written for me

[Palo · Rating 4 out of 5]

lo empecé y terminé de noche, cuál profecía autocumplida. al menos me sentí acompañada en el camino de la lectura y el dormir aleatorio. la quise mucho.

[Mery ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

Anyone who has suffered through the wide-eyed hell of a sleepless night will find something recognizable in Benjamin’s searingly honest memoir about her years battling for rest. I am not a fellow sufferer!

"It is at moments like these when I sense the void migrate from the perimeter of my existence and begin to pervade its center, that I start to question what I am about. Why am I in this house, this bed, this marriage? Why, when I look back over a string of formative selves, all those era-defined embodiments of me pulling in different directions, do I find myself on this path and not on any other? […] At moments such as these, everything that is closest to my heart, that generates the impression of gravity in my world, gets rudely pitched across the universe."

This memoir is more like a book of poetic insights than a book on sleep. She does mention a few possible remedies in between a tiresome dialogue. But for me, there's no real answer except to know that there's no real answer and that often you just won't be able to sleep until you deal with what's troubling you! Also, dreams and subconscious work can help too!

[Delfina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo feliz que me hace que este libro haya llegado a Argentina y de la mano de Chai. La traducción es excelente. No soy una lectora de ensayos, mejor dicho, soy una mala lectora de ensayos. Leo pocos y soy indisciplinada, la mayoría los dejo por la mitad pero Insomnio es adictivo, Destaco la prosa de la escritora, sumamente poetica y su habilidad para entrelazar armoniosamente sus experiencias personales con literarura, medicina, psicoanalisis y mitología. Vayan por él ❤

[Leandro Pannunzio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paradójicamente soporífero.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been listening to this free library loan audiobook whilst crocheting. I picked it as I frequently suffer from insomnia and disrupted sleep, and wanted to hear someone else's opinion on the matter.

Benjamin talks all manner of things from the physical side effects of sleeplessness to the psychological, from Greek mythology to nocturnal happenings, to CBT to valerian tea.

Her narration is poetic and imaginative. Her voice is well suited to audiobook.

An enjoyable listen.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of this book is quite disjointed and seemed unnecessarily wordy, but the parts that weren't made me feel like I was understood by an old friend. If you have insomnia, this is a comforting read.

[G. Munckel · Rating 3 out of 5]

En esta reflexión sobre el insomnio —que la autora padece— se entrelazan lo autobiográfico, las lecturas sobre el tema, la literatura y la pintura. El libro avanza hilando fragmentos que saltan de un tema a otro: el sueño y las diferentes técnicas para alcanzarlo, la oscuridad de la casa y la soledad de la noche, entre otros.

A pesar de que la falta de sueño no es algo que se disfrute, Benjamin logra escribir sobre su padecimiento con algo parecido al cariño que se le tiene a un viejo amigo.

[Elisabeth Orion · Rating 4 out of 5]

ich hatte es neben dem Bett um immer drin zu lesen wenn ich nicht einschlafen kann und das war hervorragend und letzte Nacht bin ich fertig geworden und konnte dann trotzdem noch nicht einschlafen - NAJA

ein wunderschöner fließender Essay über Schlaflosigkeit der einen durch die Nacht trägt, ich kann es nur empfehlen.

[Jonathan Maas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Dreamlike, or Rather Insomnia-like Collection of Insights

This book documents the author Marina Benjamin's battle and experience with insomnia.

There are shades of Sick: A Memoir by Porochista Khakpour - Benjamin struggles with this constantly, but keeps you turning the page.

There are shades of The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon - Benjamin has a difficult time with her syndrome, yet still manages to produce a quality book.

But this book has its own style

There are no chapters. There are just three or so paragraph chunks of insight, each one fading into the next. You can group the insights by theme, but like a night spent awake - each does fade into the next, and makes a continuous stream.

But the whole does add up - it adds up to something absolutely incredible, and absolutely unique.

I recommend this to just about everyone.

[Karen Mace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a book that will help you solve your insomnia, but it does go someway in helping you understand it and know that you aren't alone as the author does a beautiful job of describing how she feels when she is suffering insomnia, and all the rational and irrational thoughts that go through your head while the rest of the world (so it seems!) is sleeping with no problems.

It's only a short book but contains so many different thoughts, perspectives and attitudes towards the different stages of insomnia, how it has affected others and how you react to it when suffering. I found myself agreeing with the author on a number of occasions with the thoughts she had as she tried to overcome her insomnia and put that time to good use in whatever way she could.

It touches on the factors in modern life that cause it along with the world we live in that has an industry in sleep cures - all the pills and potions that are meant to help you in your hour of need!

I loved the way it was told in little paragraphs - the variety of thoughts and randomness of your mind when it is deprived of sleep, and found it to be an interesting book to read anytime of the day or night!

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A luminous meditation on the interminable condition of insomnia, that shadowy hinterland between longed-for sleep and unwelcome wakefulness.

Anyone who has ever experienced the long-drawn-out restlessness of a night without sleep will almost certainly find themselves nodding along to various elements with this jewel-like book. Benjamin – a writer, journalist and editor by trade – writes beautifully about her intimate relationship with insomnia, punctuating her own experiences with fragments spanning the cultural, philosophical and artistic history of the condition in a way that feels both candid and immersive all at once. Her descriptions of insomnia are lyrical and lucid, perfectly capturing the freewheeling association between disparate thoughts as the mind rapidly darts from one topic to another, like a pinball machine firing up in the subconscious.

To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...

[steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I made the mistake of trying to plow through this book on two seperate occasions. The first, when I started it and the second, when I finished it. Benjamin's prose are so poetic and well thought out, they demand thinking time. I'd recommend reading this book alongside another so you don't force it.

Now, when I flick through and look at the words that grabbed me, I'm still as moved as I was when I first read the same sentences.

Luckily for me, insomnia has never really been an ailment of mine - although I do fear it. I've had a few occasions when I've woken in the middle of night and fought to get back to sleep. Afraid that otherwise I'll be in this limbo land that will leave me fatigued on the day coming, where inevitably, as always, I have scheduled a lot for myself to do.

When I started reading, a whole book that pondered sleep and lack there of, kind of seemed excessive and I don't know, perhaps unnecessary? Then Benjamin talks at the end about the power of collages and it resonates beautifully because you realise that's exactly what this book is. It isn't just about sleep but about life, and feelings, subconscious and conscious. It's a collection of thoughts that should be ingested and appreciated slowly.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marina Benjamin's Insomnia, published by Scribe in November 2018, is described as an 'intense, lyrical, witty, and humane exploration of a state we too often consider only superficially.'  In her memoir, Benjamin has 'produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition that treats our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love.'  

Its blurb points to the way in which Insomnia crosses genre boundaries: 'At once philosophical and poetical, the book ranges widely over history and culture, literature and art, exploring a threshold experience that is intimately involved with trespass and contamination: the illicit importing of day into night.'  Lauded in several reviews on the book's inside cover is the strength and beauty of Benjamin's writing.  Olivia Laing compares it to Anne Carson's, and says of the book: 'Every insomniac knows how sleeplessness warps and deforms reality.  Marina Benjamin anatomises its endless nights and red-eyed mornings, finding a sublime language for this strange state of lack.'  Francis Spufford calls Benjamin 'the Scheherazade of sleeplessness, spinning tale upon tale, insight upon insight, in frayed and astonishing and finally ecstatic leaps.'

Benjamin's prose is raw and honest, and there is an impressive amount of polish given to the whole.  Insomnia has been pieced together using a fragmentary style.  Some of Benjamin's entries span a long paragraph; others consist of a single sentence.  Each entry provides a rumination which is, in some way, related to sleeplessness.  The central thread which runs through the whole connects each of the fragments together, and it feels almost as though it comes full-circle.  

Benjamin's writing is both sensual and provocative.  At the beginning of Insomnia, whilst she is describing her own experiences with the inability to sleep, she talks of the voluptuous quality of being awake whilst everyone around her is sleeping.  She writes: 'When I am up at night the world takes on a different hue.  It is quieter and closer and there are textures of the dark I have begun paying attention to.  I register the thickening, sense-dulling darkness that hangs velvety as a pall over deep night, and the green-black tincture you get when moisture charges the atmosphere with static.'  She goes on to describe one of the main effects which insomnia has upon her: 'At the velvet end of my insomniac life I am a heavy-footed ghost, moving from one room to another, weary, leaden - there, but also not there.'

Benjamin is always aware of herself in time.  She is candid about her experiences with sleeplessness, and is able to give weight and importance to the very early morning, which many of us miss.  'These days,' she tells us, 'my prime time is 4.15 a.m., a betwixt and between time, neither day nor night.  At 4.15 a.m., birds chirrup, foxes scream, and sometimes, when the rotating schedule for landing and take-off from Heathrow Airport collides with my sleeplessness, planes rumble overhead.'  She gives thought, too, to the spaces we share when we sleep: 'To share a bed with someone is to entertain a conversation played out in the language of movement and space.'

Benjamin's ideas feel rather profound at times.  She asks, for instance, 'If we insist on defining something in terms of what it annuls then how can we grasp the essence of what is lost when it shows itself?  And how can we tell if there is anything to be gained by its presence?  This is the trouble with insomnia.'  

In Insomnia, she probes what insomnia really means, and traces such things as the word's origins, and its interpretations throughout history.  She examines different 'cures' given to those suffering with insomnia, and draws connections between women sufferers, thought to be mad, being sent to live in asylums.  Benjamin moves fluidly between such subjects as religion, mindfulness, nightmares, and ancient folktales, to alchemy, psychology, and representations of the night.

Of the collective experience of insomnia, which she points out is little discussed, she writes: 'Like travel, insomnia is an uprooting experience.  You are torn out of sleep like a plant from its native soil, then shaken down so that any clinging vestige of slumber falls away, naked confusion exposed like nerve endings.  Sleep, in its turn, is a matter of gravity.  It pulls you down, beds you in the earth,  burrows you in.  In sleep you connect back to the bedrock that provides nourishment and restorative rest.'

Benjamin's book is rich and layered.  Despite covering only 122 pages, she has managed to create a measured and well-structured approach to a condition which needs more attention drawn toward it.  Her ruminations are always of interest, and feel rather thought-provoking, particularly when they draw together feelings which those of us who are not insomniacs are so aware of, and can connect with: 'Insomnia makes an island of you.  It is, bottom line, a condition of profound loneliness.  And not even a dignified loneliness, because in insomnia you are cannibalised by your own gnawing thoughts.'

I have never, thankfully, suffered with insomnia, but Benjamin's memoir has given me a real insight into what the experience involves.  I had never before thought that losing sleep would have any positive qualities, but Benjamin's musings have made me reconsider this.  I found Insomnia surprisingly moving at times.

[mysterygif · Rating 3 out of 5]

a fine spiderweb expansively musing on the dark merits and mysteries of the interminable time-warping agony. critiques the blunt-force reductiveness of current pathology. if you're in the habit of not sleeping, she'll have said something familiar within- good to peruse in the wee hours.

[Katie.dorny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir about insomnia and the author that took a few too many tangents that’s couldn’t connect well in the end.

[Guady Alonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

no sé cómo recomendar esto pero léanlo. Es la compañía y la resignificación del insomnio que necesitaba para no sentirme tan mal al respecto. No es que no haya que dormir, por supuesto, pero por lo menos reflexionar sobre el insomnio le abre algunas puertas nuevas.

[Caro Mouat · Rating 3 out of 5]

El libro es muy interesante y está muy bien escrito. Me encantó todo lo relacionado con las camas, la intimidad que implica compartir la cama con alguien. También amé todas las referencias artísticas, desde Magritte, hasta Penélope, pasando por Sherezade. Y creo que todo el tema de la oscuridad, la noche, la ansiedad me toma mucho y es de lo mejor elaborado del libro. Mi único y gran pero es que a ratos la narración se me hizo difícil de seguir. No sé si por repetitiva o por cómo hilaba las ideas o yo no estaba en mi mejor momento lector, pero eso me sacó varias veces.

[Scribe Publications]

Every insomniac knows how sleeplessness warps and deforms reality. Marina Benjamin anatomises its endless nights and red-eyed mornings, finding a sublime language for this strange state of lack. Her writing is often reminiscent of Anne Carson: beautiful, jagged and precise.
Olivia Laing, Author of The Lonely City

An exquisite meditation on time, the dark hours, and the complexities of longtime love, Insomnia is a poetic journey into the wide-awake, generous, exciting mind of Marina Benjamin. I couldn't put it down, and my own inner world is richer for it.
Dani Shapiro, Author of Hourglass

A sublime view of the treasures and torments to be found in wakefulness. Entertaining and existential, the brightest star in this erudite, nocturnal reverie in search of lost sleep, is the beauty of the writing itself.
Deborah Levy, Author of Hot Milk

Marina Benjamin is the Scheherazade of sleeplessness, spinning tale upon tale, insight upon insight, in frayed and astonishing and finally ecstatic loops.
Francis Spufford, Author of Golden Hill

Benjamin writes beautifully. This is a graceful rumination on the ‘wicked kind of trespass’ that is insomnia, a work cogent and allusive as a lucid dream, a palimpsest of insights to dip into, day or night.
Anna Funder, Author of Stasiland and All That I Am

Insomnia reads with the surreal and suspended cadence of those lonely hours in the night that only the sleep-less experience. It is, therefore, a kind and intimate companion to our meandering, agitated, non-knowing, spiritually naked thoughts at such hours. Keep it by your bedside lamp!
Sarah Wilson, Author of First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

Insomnia is not so much a lament for lost oblivion as a defiant hymn to the wild isle of Insomnia.
Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald

It’s a book about insomnia’s existential and somatic qualities … Insomnia is a striking reminder of how strange we remain to ourselves. We spend a third of our lives in sleep, but our relationship with that condition is, as Benjamin describes it, “perverse” and “fundamentally embattled”. Read this at night at your own peril.
The Saturday Paper

[Insomnia is] a memoir in roving fragments that mirror the workings of a sleepless mind.
Lilly Dancyger, Vulture

A darkly thrilling beauty of a book … Benjamin’s talent is Arachne-like. The materials she integrates are eclectic, and the resulting constructed web of her thoughts is architecturally robust and resplendent with dazzling prose.
Australian Book Review, Tali Lavi

A short, ludic book about long white nights ... [Benjamin] writes feelingly about the frustrations of being awake when you don’t want to be ... Her moans about her futile thought-loops alternate with flattering descriptions of her radiant nocturnal consciousness.
The New Yorker

Velvety ruminations on night wakefulness ... Benjamin’s mind works like a wide-roving trawler that rakes an area repeatedly before moving on to adjacent territory ... Insomnia turns out to be somewhat of a celebration of sleeplessness as well as a lament ... and is filled with memorable images.
Heller McAlpin, NPR

A work that takes its structure from the insomniac’s mind, flitting restlessly between ideas to build what may be described as a philosophical portrait of sleeplessness ... This strange, entrancing book is in many ways a love letter, albeit one to a particularly irritating lover. Benjamin wants, she writes, “to flip disruption and affliction into opportunity, and puncture the darkness with stabs of light”.
Jane McCredie, Weekend Australian

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this book was less about the content itself than about it evoking the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep again: all the emotions and thoughts running around in your head, the inexplicable things you do etc. It also has some interesting ideas on sleep, insomnia, the psychology behind it and the myths surrounding it, although I did think that a bit more time could have been spent on some of the themes. By jumping from topic to topic, the book further gives you the feeling of being an insomniac with racing thoughts in the middle of the night, but it doesn't give you much of a flashed out perspective on the contemporary attitude toward insomnia, for example. I found the author's impatience with rote phrases about how to combat her insomnia very relatable, as well as her opinion on sleep-aides and how they somehow create a different kind of state than sleep. And I have to mention that I absolutely love the cover of this book.

Overall, definitely an interesting book with ruminations about insomnia and making you feel that you as a reader suffer from it while reading it. I definitely want to come back and re-read this book again in the coming years.

[Kathrynisreading · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who has suffered from insomnia for nine years I really wanted a story that focused more on the authors reality and not on so many other elements. It’s an interesting read but the Greek mythology was just not my favorite and it did nothing to help move the memoir along.

[Chelsea Vincenzi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first book that I couldn’t finish in a long time. I was looking forward to this book, but the wordy ness, the incoherent stream of consciousness, and the confusing thoughts on Greek Philosophy just didn’t work for me.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not alone :)