Rest and Be Thankful
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4.2 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
'Gorgeously written ... It's heartbreaking but beautiful, and perfect for escaping into' FLORENCE WELCH
'Haunting yet beautifully written. I couldn't put it down. A masterpiece' POPPY DELEVINGNE
Laura is a nurse in a paediatric unit. On long shifts she cares for sick babies, carefully handling their exquisitely breakable bodies.
Laura needs a rest. When she sleeps, she dreams of drowning; when she wakes, she can't remember getting home. And there is a strange figure dancing in the corner of her vision, with a message, or a warning.
'Blends gnawing tension and surging tenderness ... Glass's battlefield prose calls to mind the literature of the trenches. This, though, is a trauma-generating war on death and despair fought for us in every city, every day' i paper
'Touching, devastating, almost absurdly pertinent ... What, Glass asks, do we expect from our caregivers, and how do we repay them for the burdens we lay on them?' Times Literary Supplement
'The ward scenes, with their crystalline descriptions of the vertiginous business of care, exquisitely beat out the ceaseless rhythms of life on a hospital front line' Metro
'Thrusts the reader into the pulse-raising fear, frenzy and relief of work in a paediatric intensive-care unit ... A battlefield atmosphere arises from Glass's prose as she recounts the time-stopping teamwork that aims to preserve tiny, fragile lives' Economist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Glass (Peach) delivers a slim, dreamy sophomore novel about a sleep-deprived nurse. While working night shifts in a neonatal ward in London, Laura and her colleagues swaddle infants, care for them in their first moments of life, and watch as sick babies die from incurable ailments. When Laura is not working in the ward, she is at home with her partner, a man who seems to not love her or want her near ("The television is blaring. You are drowning out the world with loud sounds and whisky," Laura narrates in a second-person passage addressed to him). In semi-waking moments, Laura begins seeing a haunting figure from her dreams: "in the pitch black her face shines sickly white, picked out by a shard of moonlight." When Laura starts seeing the figure in the hospital whenever a death occurs on the ward, she worries she is going mad. Glass's prose perfectly elicits the restless waking torment that drapes over Laura. The novel is visceral, and readers will keep turning the pages in fascinated dread.
