Such richness makes all of Glass’ writing stand out, but this glimpse into the world of nursing feels like a true literary rarity. Glass wants readers inside Laura’s body, tasting seawater in her nightmares of drowning, feeling her limb-heaviness as she falls asleep at a friend’s kitchen table. Readers familiar with Glass’ debut novel, Peach (2018), will recognize her inimitable style here: elliptical and lyric with an intense interiority. As things continue to deteriorate, Laura is less and less sure that her nightmare, waking or otherwise, will ever end. Worst of all, she is seeing things: a woman in black like the specter of death itself, appearing in the Tube, the hospital, and in Laura’s dreams. She is beset by poor sleep and haunted by nightmares. At work, a baby’s health worsens rapidly, and Laura has to navigate the minefield of patients, their families, the doctors and other nurses she works with, and a cluelessly cheerful med student. The man she lives with-addressed throughout in the second person-has become standoffish and irritable the fact that they work opposite shifts doesn’t help the drift between them. But as the novel begins, Laura’s world is falling apart. She has time off coming up, if she can just fight her way through the exhaustion to get there. Laura is trying to make it through a week of night shifts at the hospital children’s ward. A London pediatric nurse struggles not to let her job consume her.
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