About the Book:
After an accident leaves his wife in a coma, he sits on a hospital chair day-in day-out singing to her. Nobody can pull him away from her as she threads through the rage that could save her. Meanwhile, a desperate nurse grows her admiration for him into obsessive desire.
Book Links:
Goodreads * Amazon
Quotes
Anyone can see this man is drawn to his wife with fanatical intensity, beseeching God to give him sense so that he can reconcile the irreconcilable. Paradoxically, through him and his comatose wife I have a vision of order I can aim to, it comforts me to breathe the same air as this man, being part of his landscape. (nurse)
My mother is tight, neat, closed. I want to explode and scare her, show her the real me. I want her to see through to the real me. But I don’t dare, because whenever she’s around I revert to nothing. I wonder if the pain will go once she’s dead. Then I feel guilty. (wife)
He couldn’t learn to do her toes in a hundred years, and surely hopes he won’t have that long, so he gets someone else to come in once a week who also does her wax every three weeks. That’s how my patient’s heels are soft like a baby’s, unlike mine, which are cracked and tired of my body being on my feet all day. Her legs are smooth like silk, whilst sleeping next to me must feel like lying in bed with a horse brush.
‘I have not slept for nights, I have not slept for nights. I do not remember when I ate last, an apple on Thursday.’ I feel like my flow has dried and I can’t fly anymore. (wife)
The man in Room 11 is singing again as he keeps watch on his Salvador Dali girl dripping out of the canvas of the world. ‘We longed for a child but he was stillborn.’ Next he pauses and takes his eyes off me to look out of the window, so I cannot see the hollowness in them. ‘She suffered like a dog,’ he whispers. ‘But we’re ready now, when she comes back.’
Read a Snippet:
For what seems like a long time, I lay there listening to my family on the other side of the door, loudly talking over each other like politicians. I can’t believe they are standing in the middle of the corridor shouting. ‘What about?’ There is always one tragedy or other to be glossed over if it is serious or thoroughly analysed if it is irrelevant. ‘What’s the drama now? It’s not like there has been an accident!’ I already know that no one will ask about my recent diagnosis, not even extend me a rigor mortis hand, because my family likes to pussyfoot. They’d rather switch on the TV, the radio or both, without really taking notice of either, and keep discussing which butcher sells the best chistorra. There is security in boisterous gatherings and the noisier the merrier to cover any scary silences. I can hear so much upheaval already, it clouds my senses. It is their motto, ‘There is to be no lull in the meaningless communication of inanities.’ Yet attempting any real understanding of each other is taboo, a pagan ceremony for needy morons. ‘Will we go with all our feelings to the grave?’ I want to ask. (wife)
About the Author:
Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She studied at Oxford University and worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London, before becoming an indie fiction writer. Also by her, Inconceivable Tales, Death in Pisa, Sour Pricks, A Pack of Wolves, STUP, Mum, Watch Me Have Fun!, Marmotte’s Journey, West bEgg, Room 11, Triple Bagger, Caro M, Opera, the Retreat, sells sea shells and aberri (homeland), all available on Amazon.
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