[1] In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams.

The novel contains autobiographical elements including glimpses into her childhood in Kentucky, visiting jazz clubs to see Billie Holiday, trysts with American Communists, poets, and New York's literary intelligentsia.

As told by writer Sarah Nicole Prickett: "Hardwick began the novel after divorcing her husband [the American poet Robert Lowell] and finished it after he died in a taxi from the airport to her apartment."

[3] In a rave review for The New York Times, Joan Didion called Sleepless Nights an "extraordinary and haunting book".

[4] Writing for The New York Times in 2018, Lauren Groff referred to the book as "brilliant, brittle and strange".