Welcome to Litsy!

I have a feeling this one is going to stay with me for a while. I always love a story where characters are thrown together and become a united group: passangers on a train, students in a dorm, etc. In this case, the characters are patients in a shared hospital ward. Their life stories are played out for each other in ways that are both poignant and cringeworthy. How do we touch each other's hearts in those situations? How do we move on? Loved it.

“We should be valued in neither our successes nor our failures, but in our endurance.” Feeney is a poet and it shows in this, her first novel: the language is miraculous. A terminal cancer diagnosis has Sinead, the narrator, marooned in a hospital ward in Galway. Reluctant to admit her own truths to anyone, her fellow patients give her a lifeline back to what matters most. Painful, hilarious, and unforgettable.