Welcome to Litsy!

Things I love:
-The pacing leaves plenty of room for emotions to develop.
-The perspective shows both the frustration of the US medical system and the wonder we can access when knocked out of our unconscious narratives.
-The writing, beautiful without being sappy.

Things that don't quite work:
-The extended treatises on poetry and music go on too long for my taste.
-The meticulous detail, which gets tedious.

Soft pick for a #tob25 longlist title

This is the start of Small Rain. It‘s something, I think, anyone who has been to a US ER with chronic illness/pain would recognize. I was just there going through this the week before Christmas.

I loved this. The MC, a poet, ends up in the ICU after a sudden, devastating, medical episode.

The medical bits were a tough read, and quite upsetting at times but still weirdly beautiful. The rest of the book was also full of beauty, as the MC reflected on music, art, love, poetry and dogs. ❤️

I highly recommend this, from the #toblonglist - it should have made the shortlist.

Set amidst the Covid pandemic, the narrator experiences sharp pain but waits 5 days to seek medical attention.He ends up hospitalised while the doctors are trying to figure out what caused the tear in his aorta.In less able hands this could have turned into a dull disaster but Greenwell is a poet, wonderful writer and his insights, memories, poetry analyses and observations are a pleasure to read. I didn‘t love all of it but it is a pick for me.

In the summer of 2020, a man has a sudden, unexpected (non-Covid) health crisis. We follow his bewilderment and fear in the ICU from one day to the next as he waits to see if he will teeter into death. It a beautiful meditation on life and death and the suddenness of change. The pandemic and its politics are present here, but not the focus. It‘s so well done.