I am gratified by the response to my new book, INSOMNIAC CITY:
The New Yorker: “This touching memoir of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, by a photographer and writer with whom he fell in love near the end of his life, turns a story of death into a celebration….”
Bay Area Reporter: On the paperback edition of “Insomniac City” + “How New York Breaks Your Heart”
Review in The Telegraph – Calcutta: “‘Insomniac City’…is a celebration of lived experience ….”
Profile in the Hindustan Times: “I aimed for discretion. I didn’t want it to be explicit, but I wanted it to be intimate. I think there’s a fine line between the two.”
Review by Jai Arjun Singh in Scroll.In, India: “…Given that loss and grief haunt its pages, it is a minor astonishment how uplifting Insomniac City is.”
Profile in the Windy City Times, Chicago: “By all rights, ‘Insomniac City’ should feel like a book about loss—in addition to losing two partners, Hayes also writes about the death of his beloved agent. Yet the book teems with vibrant examples of life…”
Interview in the Indian Express – Delhi: “With age comes an understanding: One has to be open to possibilities for Joy.”
Review by Sidin Vakukut, LiveMint – India: “…It is a gift to be able to write about the greatest city on the planet, the capital of the world, in prose that is so becalming. It is also a book about the truly remarkable soul that was Oliver Sacks.”
The Irish Times – Profile and Review by Catherine Conroy: “I am a fortunate man,” indeed.
Sunday Times, London: To New York, With Love – Profile and Review by Louis Wise Bill Hayes’s heartbreaking memoir is a celebration of both the city and the remarkable Dr Oliver Sacks
GOOP: “…especially for those who love love, Bill Hayes’s memoir Insomiac City will make your heart ache and break in the best way possible….”
Sydney Morning Herald: “Hayes [is] a modern anatomist of the observed world…”
Georgina Godwin interviews Bill Hayes for MONOCLE magazine/radio, London, about “a book that’s had a profound emotional impact on me and almost everyone who’s read it: ‘INSOMNIAC CITY'”
The New York Times – Book Review by Jennifer Senior
“[A] loving tribute to Sacks and to New York . . . Read just 50 pages, and you’ll see easily enough how Hayes is Sacks’s logical complement. Though possessed of different temperaments, both are alive to difference, variety, the possibilities of our rangy humanity; both are avid chroniclers of our species . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching–[Hayes’s photographs] unmask their subjects’ best and truest selves.”
Evening Standard – London – Book Review by Katie Law
“A wonderfully tender and touching portrait of the love and happiness two people were lucky enough to find together.”
The London Economic – Book Review by Hubert O’Hearn: “This year of 2017 is still fairly young and I know I shall fill it with many fine reading experiences. So far, though, ‘Insomniac City’ is the best.”
NPR – Book Review by Heller McAlpin
“Although Hayes and Sacks never married, the charming, intimate portrait that emerges [in ‘Insomniac City’] earns a place on the shelf of moving spousal tributes — a gallery that includes Calvin Trillin’s About Alice and John Bayley’s Elegy for Iris, to name just two….”
BrainPickings – Book Review by Maria Popova
“‘Insomniac City’ is an ineffably splendid read in its entirety, a mighty packet of pure aliveness…Unbearably beautiful…”
Newsweek Magazine – Best New Books – by Chelsea Hassler
“Buy a box of tissues and pray for snow: This is the perfect weekend February read…”
An Amazon Best Book of February 2017: Review by Erin Kodicek, The Amazon Book Review “Sacks was widely beloved…It stands to reason, then, that Sacks’s life partner must be pretty remarkable as well, and ‘Insomniac City’ provides ample proof. In this affectionate and magnanimous memoir, author and photographer Bill Hayes pays tribute to their relationship, and provides a paean to one of the other loves of his life: New York City….Somewhere, Oliver Sacks is smiling.”
San Francisco Chronicle – Book Review by Steve Silberman
“Like Patti Smith’s haunting ‘M Train,’ Hayes’ book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary — a secret place where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew…”
The Bay Area Reporter – Book review by Tim Pfaff
“‘Insomniac City’ is as eloquent in its silences and visuals as it is in its telling of the secrets of the heart….”
Lambda Literary – Book Review by Steve Susoyev – “This is a book to be savored…”
Buzzfeed News – “What It Was Like to Love Oliver Sacks” – Excerpt from INSOMNIAC CITY
“‘I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness,’ O says….”
Counterpunch – Book Review by Charles R. Larson
“The beauty of Hayes’ narrative resides in his observations of the people he meets, mostly on the city’s streets. The story includes his poignant encounters and conversations with taxi drivers, skateboarders, homeless people, the elderly, shop owners, and others. He has a sharp ability to draw out of these people memorable accounts of their lives and work….”
Bowery Boys Bookshelf – “A Strange Tale of Love and a Tribute to Off-Beat New York”
Kirkus Reviews – An interview with author Bill Hayes – by Alex Layman
“One thing I hoped to capture in the book was the two worlds I occupied in New York: One world was confined to the apartment where Oliver and I lived, a cocoon of creativity and discussion, with a quirky, almost 19th century neurologist,” he says. “And then there was my life on the streets of New York….”
WHYY radio’s Marty Moss-Coane interviews the author of INSOMNIA CITY, a book about falling in love with Oliver Sacks and New York City.
Shelf Awareness – An interview with author Bill Hayes – by Dave Wheeler – “I always knew that New York would be the main character of this book, because it saved my life in a certain way,” Hayes says.
Interview with the Garrison Institute by Jenara Nerenberg: ” I like the idea of people taking their time with the book and letting it stretch out their experience of time and memory….”
Available at independent and online booksellers in the U.S. now.
Order a copy now:
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