Reviews

Rest and Be Thankful by Emma Glass

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emmavonb's review

4.0

Dreams often blend into reality. Memories and the events of the day morphing together to create a strange and surreal place that you often visit. But if you cant distinguish between the two, the consequences can be disastrous. Emma Glass explores this idea and many more in her novella 'Rest and Be Thankful'. Her main character is a nurse, a woman who is dangerously overworked and wholly unappreciated. She gives her everything to everyone, and then some. But no one can take on everything, no matter how hard they try, how much they love, or how hard they sacrifice. Just because you can take it on, doesn't mean you should.

katiejames's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

suspriea's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad

2.75

Is this a story about work struggle, sleep deprivation, or haunting ghosts?

Aside from the funny way of using words in conveying the feeling, it's a nice book that one can devour in one sitting. The piece of Laura's life unraveled eeriely and in total gloom, interesting to read.

sirenas's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense

3.0

sam8834's review

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emotional reflective

4.0

A dark, quiet, small novel about so many things. Emma Glass really conveyed the heaviness of care work here; unsurprisingly, she works in the field, herself. The narrator, Laura, is a pediatric nurse in a seemingly understaffed hospital, tending to an unending stream of sick and dying babies. She is experiencing burnout for a number of reasons - namely, the physical and emotional toll of the job (her skin is badly dried out from so much hand-washing; the weight of having to deliver horrible news to already grieving parents), but also the additional loads she takes on to help her staff, whether it be making tea for the doctors when they have to deliver bad news, directing other staff, or picking up shifts for coworkers who, by her own admission, have more going on in their non-working lives than she does. Her relationship is falling apart, partly because she gives everything to work and nothing to her partner, but also because her partner is kind of a dick / incapable of providing the emotional support she needs. She isn't eating enough, doesn't have time for any enjoyable activities outside of work, and is having mysterious hallucinatory experiences.

Laura is, by all accounts, a typical millennial type, trying and failing to "have it all" under the crush of capitalism, giving her all to a job that doesn't give her much in return, a worker with an inability to say "no" to any task (so often, she takes on jobs the rest of the staff flat out refuse to handle, like cleaning vomit, and I mean, I strictly canNOT handle vom, but who goes to work in a hospital who is unable to deal with it?!). She's also a woman, to whom many sacrificial workplace roles fall to - when the staff orders pizza, she assumes she will watch the floor while everyone eats. Fortunately, another worker steps in and forces her to go eat.

Where the babies she cares for are on life support, Laura is also on life support, in a way, drowning under life's requirements of her as so many in their 20s and 30s are. On paper, these requirements and events are fairly ordinary - high-stress job, relationship troubles, figuring out what to eat - but the takeaway from this novel is that adulting in the 21st century is really fucking hard.

Oh, and on top of all that, there's all the ghost-y, hallucinatory shit happening. Admittedly, I didn't understand some of it, particularly the ending. But I don't need the clarity. This is a really concentrated, heavy novel, and I look forward to more from Glass.