The Quick - Softcover

Spinney, Laura

2.94

36 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007240503 ISBN 13: 9780007240500

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2007

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The chilling, ghostly account of a doctor who is determined to find light in a lifeless body.

Patient DL lies motionless in a small room at the end of a hospital corridor. She has suffered massive damage to her brain, and it's not clear whether she can see or hear the world around her.

When Sarah Newman, the narrator of this ghostly tale, is charged with finding a spark of light in her lifeless body, she is drawn into a drama which extends far beyond the hospital walls. What accident befell DL to cause her such massive brain damage? Why does her family behave in such unsettling and perplexing ways? Why is DL's estranged husband visiting the patient after hours, in the dead of night? And what is troubling the narrator herself, who seems to carry a burden from her past?

As the tension builds and the strange case of Patient DL becomes known to the outside world, Sarah Newman finds herself at the heart of a personal and an ethical dilemma. ‘The Quick ‘is the thrilling account of an obsession, charged throughout with a sense of the mystery of consciousness. It heralds the arrival of a major new talent.

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Review:

/ From the author of 'The Doctor' comes a disturbing and ghostly tale about a doctor's obsession with a mysterious comatose patient. / 'The Quick' is ideal reading group material and will be featured on the Reading Groups website. / Guaranteed review and feature coverage.

From the Author:

Imagine being totally paralysed but fully conscious, able to
see, hear, smell and feel pain, but unable to communicate your sensations
to the world. Can you? No, not unless you've been there. But someone in
that predicament could imagine being otherwise, and anyone can follow
anyone else into the world of imagination. That's what I did in my new
novel, The Quick. I set out in pursuit of someone who intrigued me, and
ended up embarking on a long voyage.

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