The Language of Kindness

March 1, 2018

Helping others do things that they cannot do for themselves and being on hand to provide emotional support, two fundamental actions of nurses, are examples of kindness that can transcend speech. Watson (Tiny Sunbirds; Far Away) combines 20 years of experience with an accomplished writing ability to illustrate how nurses speak their own language of kindness. Her memoir is not a sentimental account of reflection. Instead, it is an engaging and authentic portrait of modern care. Having practiced both mental health nursing and children's nursing in her native England, the author has seen firsthand how members of her profession positively affect their patients' lives and withstand various obstacles in the process. Through Watson's inclusion of relevant statistics and historical facts, as well as her meticulous observation skills, readers will better understand the value of nurses. Similarly, Theresa Brown's memoir, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives, gives readers a new appreciation for loyal hospital nurses. VERDICT Despite references to British health care, this book is highly recommended for an American audience. Nursing students and new practitioners should add this to their collections.--Chad Clark, San Jacinto Coll. Dist., Pasadena, TX

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2018
A poignant journey through the "tragedies and joys of a remarkable career" in hospital patient care.Before becoming a successful novelist, Watson (Where Women Are Kings, 2015, etc.) spent 20 years as a nurse, and her vast experience informs this memoir. She escorts readers through the hospital wards she's been assigned to, attests to the work-related trauma that threatened her personal spirit, and celebrates the return on her investment in a nursing career. As a teenager in Britain, Watson stumbled onto nursing courses, found her niche, and never looked back. Her first year as a nursing student proved harrowing, and she describes her attempt to save the life of a newly discovered suicide victim on the floor of his room. This event prompts commentary on frustrating governmental cuts in health care that she believes are crippling critical mental health and social service programs. Written with warmth and a sense of empathy for her patients, the memoir flows through episodes early in her nursing career when she shadowed a midwife through labor and delivery, trained in a pediatric intensive care unit, soothed a child with aggressive brain cancer, and comforted an elderly widow complaining of chest pain but whose appearance and symptoms more directly pointed to a broken heart. Watson also sorrowfully chronicles her own father's death "in slow motion" in a cancer ward and the palliative nurse who made a lasting final impression on his life. As she notes, the author's nursing career also had its softer, kinder edges, but her graphic descriptions of operating room procedures and the eye-watering aromas hovering over a surgical nursing unit may leave more sensitive readers lightheaded. The author's passion for and true love of nursing are evident on every page, and this quality makes the book an absorbing read and a testament to the immense responsibility, diligent work, and compassionate spirit of medical caregivers.A beautiful homage to the dignified, unsung heroes of hospital care.

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March 26, 2018
Novelist Watson (Where Women Are Kings) portrays the constant chaos and deep sense of purpose she experienced while training to be and working as a nurse in England in the 1990s in this rewarding memoir. “Each hospital is a country, unique and separate, with an infrastructure and philosophy different from the next one,” yet she shows the “language of kindness” to be a universal one among nurses. In descriptions of working on the mental health ward for the first time, of first assisting at a birth, and of carefully extricating a premature infant “from his bed of wires” to cuddle with his mother, whom he stares at “for the longest time without blinking.” There’s not a linear personal story to this book. It zigzags through the different wards she works in and the types of nursing she does, touches on nursing theorists, and moves back and forth in time as she passes through different life phases. The result is less conventional memoir than appreciation of a profession. “Somewhere between science and art,” nursing “is all about the smallest details, and understanding how they make the biggest difference,” Watson observes. Her recollections of inhabiting this in-between space are revealing and will be especially resonant for people who work in health care.

April 1, 2018
The dedication page simply says for nurses. It makes sense, given that Watson (Where Women Are Kings, 2015) spent 20 years working as an RN before becoming a full-time writer. But this book contains wisdom for everyone. As she says, We are all nursed at some point in our lives. We are all nurses. Watson laces her story with humor as she recounts her career thoughts as a teen (she had a rethink after she discovered that much of the work of a marine biologist involved studying plankton off the coast of Wales) and about the not-so-glamorous aspects of healthcare (she describes waste products as a color somewhere between straw and out-of-date mustard ). She admits that it can be tough to remain understanding and respectful when patients huff and curse or refuse the blood transfusions that could save their lives. But despite difficult conditions, good nurses (and Watson seems to be one of them) stay kind and compassionate. Though Watson's story takes place in Britain, its messages are universal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)