Rest and Be Thankful

The protagonist of Rest and Be Thankful is Laura, an overworked and overtired pediatric nurse who works in a NCIU. When she does sleep, she has terrifying dreams. When she is awake, she hallucinates strange figures. Yet, she continues to care for sick babies. Emma Glass, a writer and nurse at a children’s hospital in London, expertly captures not only the trauma of what it’s like to be in the hospital as a patient, but what it is like to work in a hospital and deal with such horror and sickness constantly. Laura’s dread, and burnout, is palpable, but she continues to barrel forward — until the very last page. (Seriously: Someone talk to me about the ending of this book!!)

What I found so moving about Rest and Be Thankful is that I feel like I, personally, have rarely read stories from the perspective of healthcare workers — only people impacted by the healthcare system. By being in Laura’s shoes, I felt like I learned so much — plus the fact that Glass herself works at a children’s hospital made me feel that much of the horrors of the novel are drawn from her real life experience.

A Washington Post review called Rest and Be Thankful one of the “first COVID-19 novels,” though “an inadvertent one,” as it was published in the UK at the very start of the pandemic. I loved this line from their review: “If the rote and rigor of the work dulls its life-or-death pressure, it contributes to a relentless, bone-deep exhaustion that seeps into the practitioners’ personal lives. The physical strain of caring for sick children is so immediate that Laura and her colleagues tend to disregard the emotional wear, to catastrophic effects. Glass achieves a holistic view not only of the work, but the life of a health-care professional, her prosaic descriptions and muffled dialogue effecting an aesthetic quietude — like a hospital, or a morgue. Anyone who’s ever wondered how doctors arrive at their dry senses of humor would do well to read Rest and Be Thankful.”

Rating: ★★★★