Rest and Be Thankful

‘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 DELIVINGNE Laura is a nurse in a paediatric unit. On long, quiet shifts, she and her colleagues, clad in their different shades of blue, care for sick babies, handling their exquisitely frangible bodies, carefully calibrating the mysterious machines that keep them alive. Laura may be burned out. Her hands have been raw from washing as long as she can remember. When she sleeps, she dreams of water; when she wakes, she finds herself lying next to a man who doesn’t love her any more. And there is a strange figure dancing in the corner of her vision, always just beyond her reach. Dark yet luminous, sensual yet chilling, ringing with strange music and laced with dread, Rest and Be Thankful is an unforgettable novel that confirms Emma Glass as a visionary new voice. ‘What, Glass asks, do we expect from our caregivers, and how do we replay them for the burdens we lay on them? Rest and Be Thankful is almost absurdly pertinent, and with its devastating close, the answers seem stark: we ask far too much, and for some there is no replenishment’ Times Literary Supplement