In many respects Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease is a remarkable little book, an easy fusion between fiction, memoir, and a battle with insomnia. It’s no wonder it was long-listed for the Booker Prize. For once the blurb on the back cover is perfectly accurate.
I picked up my copy in the remainders section of Waterstones, Lincoln – a section just about to close, which is sad. I’ve picked up some weird and wonderful things in that room. Cheap too. My copy of The Shapeless Unease was published in the US for $24 in 2020; I paid just £3…
In spite of my regard for The Shapeless Unease, oddly I’m not sure I want to read any of Harvey’s conventional fiction on the back of this. It seems to me that it’s one of those books that seems to suggest that – in and of itself – it is ‘enough’…
Ian Gouge - Writer 