I think most of us go through bouts of struggling to have a good night's sleep. And I've read all the articles about how to remedy the situation - not looking at screens before bed, hot milk/cold milk, bananas, relaxation exercises. Sometimes these work, often they don't. But this book invites us to surrender to insomnia. We shouldn't fight it but to learn to enjoy the quiet hours of the night.

The book is a memoir essentially. Annabel Abbs is a writer who had always struggled with insomnia but found that this became intense when her father died, the last of three sudden deaths in a short period of time.

Coping with her grief, Annabel made herself as busy as possible during the day but found that she had no distractions at night, and no sleep.

Finding the quiet, still, darkness actually became soothing, a place of safety in her solitude, she started exploring the night, this other worldliness which caused her to unleash elements of her self she had previously kept constrained.

Her journey of discovery caused her to try sleeping outside, and swimming and walking in the night.

She found that we are more creative in the night and can be more contemplative and reflective. She found that men and women respond to the night differently, and that in past generations sleep and darkness was bound up with the spirit and the soul.

She stopped thinking of the night as a time but as a companion. She was no longer a 'bad' sleeper but rather a 'good' watcher. And she describes the lives of authors and artists who also struggled with sleep but enjoyed the night - Daphne du Maurier slept outside, Georgia O'Keefe went walking at night, Katherine Mansfield and Emily Dickinson wrote at night. 

This is a brilliant book with so much interesting information, beautifully told. You leave it thinking that being awake at night can be a privilege.