Joined in 2023 
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I wonder if what I’ve learned about chronic illness, more than anything, is that it’s a constant cycle. You fall apart, then you try your best to rebuild again. I wonder what would happen if I stopped trying. RT @ TheMysterious: We’re making plans to head out to @ HamptonsWhodun next month, Long Island’s exciting new crime fiction festival. Se… https://t.co/ra7RPgf7Fv Mar 30, 2023, 6:13 PM Other thoughts/things to love: the idiosyncratic description of the sanatorium in Budapest; the awkwardness of those orchestra encounters; how the book doesn't gloss over the messy and often indefinite nature of medical diagnosis; the ironic (imo) rendering of The Lightning Process; the soft, slight way she details other parts of her life (and people in her life) in the book. I am reading through the Good Reads list of eligible books for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize. https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-prize/ This prize seeks to reward “creative daring and fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form” The shortlist of 6 books will be announced on Sept 30. Let’s see how many of them I can have read in advance! I am one of the more privileged ones and still I’m screaming. God, it would be so nice just to dissolve into nothing and wash up onto a lonely beach.
Sanatorium by Abi Palmer | Goodreads Sanatorium by Abi Palmer | Goodreads
A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest. On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an 80 pound inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart. I reviewed this as part of the shortlist for a new UK literary award, the Barbellion Prize, which will be given annually “to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability.”)I felt very aware that this was a book by someone who works visually as well as word, and it felt perhaps like part of something (a something I'd like to see), a text to be chopped up and projected onto walls with photographs or installations or read out to visitors wearing headphones. It veers between dream-like sequences and down to earth realities - mould on bathtubs, especially in the inflatable she has at home, features heavily. I found the inclusion of the little figures, so typical of rehabilitation leaflets, by way of punctuation between many of the pieces effective and disturbing. She has much to say about the approach and attitudes of those who define themselves as helping professionally and shows how patients are constantly wrong-footed, not listened to and made to doubt themselves, to no good end. She includes a chilling piece which I was not surprised to learn at the end of the book comes from Phil Parker's secretive and money-raking Lightning Process, which oddly seems to appeal to medics and researchers when similar schemes are rightly derided. Conversely I kept finding images from the film A Cure for Wellness popping into my mind as I read (there are no eels this book, thank goodness) Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge--there's something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic. Loved speaking with @ danspapers about the first panel I’ll be moderating at @ HamptonsWhodun this year, featuring… https://t.co/hwrdV45fSz Apr 4, 2023, 11:48 AM A raw, beautiful, haunting, and flowing mix of diary entries, poetry, and creative non-fiction. The book chronicles the author's experience with chronic illness, pain, water, and the seemingly never-ending cycle between being unwell and (almost) well, and believed and questioned about the validity of one's disability. She includes the beautiful and the ugly. It's strange and hypnotic, but I'm into that kind of thing.
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse | Waterstones
A book that breaks genre, that break the flimsy lines of 'reality' and which speaks a hot and steamy truth. I love the way it plays with image, both in its words and illustrations. Abi's descriptions are visceral and right there with you. An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept. I ask a nurse about the side effects listed on my medication, such as nausea and liver failure. She says that side effects only happen to people who are worried about the side effects.
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Water plays a big part in that her therapy consists largely of being immersed in a sulphuric bath which “smells like rotten eggs” but seems to help. When she gets home, where there is no bathtub, she obtains a large inflatable plastic tub which sits in the middle of her living room. It’s presence almost becomes a symbol for her illness in that it is always there and in the way. DI Alex Finn, still mourning the death of his wife, Karin, from a brain tumour, investigates with DC Mattie Paulsen, who is also grappling with family issues. The Killing Choice is the second in a series that opened with The Burning Men, and is another adept police procedural, building the sense of dread to breaking point as Finn and Paulsen rush to uncover any links between the victims. This is a thoroughly immersive read which leaves the reader wondering how they would react if faced with such an unimaginable choice. As Paulsen says: “If you thought that was the only way we’d both walk away, wouldn’t you?” The longer Elin stays, the more secrets she uncovers. And when someone else drowns in a diving incident, Elin begins to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests at this luxury resort? Elin must find the killer—before the island’s history starts to repeat itself. RT @ vanessalillie: I’ve had box of Blood Sister arcs unopened for two weeks waiting on tomorrow - cover reveal by @ crimebythebook& IG… https://t.co/fnQ35GO1Nd Apr 2, 2023, 10:03 AM Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.
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