The Night Interns

Austin Duffy

From Shelf: Wish list

Three surgical interns face the drama, beauty and danger of death on the hospital night shift, in this deeply immersive and provocative novel by the critically acclaimed Irish novelist.

"Stylish, mordant, and pitch-perfect - I read it in one sitting. If Rachel Cusk or Sally Rooney had been junior doctors they might have come up with something like this" - Gavin Francis, author of Recovery --- Intravenous lines, catheters, bodies in distress, wounds: three young surgical interns working the night shift must care for - and keep alive - the influx of patients, while frightened and uncertain about what the night will throw at them. The Night Interns beautifully conjures the alien space of the hospital wards and corridors through the viewpoint of one of the interns, as he comes to terms with the bodily reality of the patients and the bizarre instruments of healing. Equally unsettling for the inexperienced junior staff are the dysfunctional hierarchies of the hospital workplace. Under intense pressure and with very little sleep, the interns become inured to their encounters with sickness, all the while searching for the meaning in their work. By turns moving, shocking, and darkly funny, The Night Interns fizzes with nervous energy, forensic insight and moral tension, as it evokes life and death on the frontline.