Go To Sleep
By (Author) Helen Walsh
Canongate Books
Canongate Books
1st September 2012
Main
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
320
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 19mm
221g
As she drinks in the view in front of her, Rachel Massey stands on the cusp of the biggest journey of her life. For Rachel is about to become a mother. Mere hours from now, her first baby will be here and she can't wait to meet it. Terrified and excited, there is nothing she wants more, yet she senses things will never be the same again.
This is the story of Rachel's voyage into motherhood. Full of the same hopes and dreams as any parent-to-be, she soon realises that nothing about this new world is as she imagined. As the raw shock of sleep deprivation takes its toll on her and the truth begins to blur with the unreal, Rachel becomes consumed by one sole desire - to sleep. But how far will she go to get her baby to sleep
Devastatingly honest and shockingly painful at times, Go To Sleep is a heart-wrenching story about one woman and her newborn child. It strips motherhood bare in the most unforgettable of ways.
* One of the more unusual, urgent young voices writing in Britain today, and very much of today's Britain, Walsh boldly confronts contemporary life, and her latest novel is a combustible combination of raw emotion and deep compassion Independent on Sunday * A brave and uncompromising novel that absolutely needed to be written dovegreyreader * Walsh is wonderfully in control of her world. Rachel's frenzied fatigue - which spirals rapidly and exponentially out of control - seeps off the novel's pages, inexorably carrying you along on her sleep-deprived journey. And you want to go along: Walsh is so terrific at making Rachel's universe immediate and vivid that you stay, immersed and riveted ... A book reflective of life itself Independent on Sunday * Walsh has a real way with words Herald * Compelling, unflinching and significant...invested with humour and colour The List * A more mature, but still hard hitting book. powerfully told. -- Doug Johnstone Big Issue * There will be lots here that is depressingly familiar to new parents. Walsh is particularly strong on that strung out narcotic hungover feeling of what life is like with too little sleep. Bookmunch
Helen Walsh was born in Warrington, England, in 1976. Go To Sleep is her third novel. Her first, Brass, was published in 2004 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Prize. Her second novel, Once Upon a Time in England, was the winner of a Somerset Maugham Prize. She now lives in Liverpool