Published By: Bloomsbury
Pages: 256
Released On: 01/08/2024
Vita Woods is on the brink. She has a good job and a successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the chat sufficient; a vivacious and charming sister Gracie, her verbal sparring partner and best friend for life; and she’s even got a goldfish called Whitney Houston, who brightens her days by showing her she’s not the only one going round in circles.
Because it’s the days that are Vita’s problem. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, Vita rarely exits the basement apartment where she lives, since Vita is in “The Pit” – a place of deep exhaustion and semi-consciousness where she spends much of her time, dead to the world and to herself. She has been sick for months, with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can medically diagnose.
One day an unexpected courier delivery forces Vita upstairs, into the light – and into a chance encounter with her neighbours upstairs. Suddenly, Vita finds herself faced with an even trickier dilemma. She likes her new friends; she’ll even sneak upstairs to see them while Max is out, against all medical advice but something about her “condition” is nagging at the borders of her mind. After all, what is a house-bound girl to do when she can’t keep the light, her new friendships, or – worst of all – her memories out? The problem might be Vita herself but as far as anyone can prove… there’s nothing wrong with her.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This book was a bit of an “on-the-fence” book. I enjoyed parts of it, and disliked others.
Vita was a well written character and relatable and I did enjoy reading her story. And a goldfish called Whitney is always a plus. To begin with, I felt a kinship to her, this unknown illness, pain, loneliness, not knowing what’s wrong, questioning your own body and mind, I get it. My own illness took several years for a diagnosis and even now, it’s not an easy thing to live with. And so Vita was definitely a friend from the off. It was really interesting to see Kate’s description of a chronic illness. It can be hard to get that description right, especially for a reader with a chronic illness, it’s difficult to get it right but not be OTT. I didn’t like her boyfriend Max though; he felt a bit selfish, and even though he doesn’t verbalise it, I got the feeling that he didn’t believe Vita.
It’s a relatively short book, and I’m not usually one who wishes for longer books, but I do wish this was longer. I think it would benefit from being longer. It’s a bit random and all over the shop, and I think if it was longer, it would have given Kate more to work with regarding the character development and background. As it is, whilst a good read, it felt like it was missing something.
If I didn’t have the personal connection to Vita’s story, I don’t think I’d have got as much from it, as there isn’t much in the way of a story.
It is an interesting commentary on mental health and psychological health, and how it can impact upon physical health. It’s good at throwing up the idea about whether physical illnesses caused by mental/psychological issues count as real illnesses. For example, I have FND, which means physically my brain is undamaged. But functionally, it doesn’t’ work well, which means it often doesn’t talk to my body to move properly, speak, grip, stand eat, etc. and my consultant was very hot on the fact that just because it’s not a physical thing that can be seen on a brain scan, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. But a lot of people see that it’s a psychological illness, and therefore note actually real. And I felt this book really stretched that idea and I really appreciated Kate writing that.
It is a bit abstract, written as a stream of consciousness and thoughts from Vita’s point of view, and so it was difficult to get any depth from the supporting characters. It’s a bit bitty, going forward and backwards to scenes that, in my opinion, didn’t even matter to the whole story. It’s a little disjointed at times, a bit random, higgledy-piggledy, but that wasn’t a deal-breaker for me. I still thought overall the story was well created, just formed a bit…off, for me.
It isn’t always an easy read. There are some complicated topics, but I never felt it was too uncomfortable to be enjoyable, I felt it was generally handled well. I enjoyed it more earlier on. I felt there were more pacing issues, and a bit too much of a confusing format as it went on.
I wish it had a better ending. I don’t mind ambiguous endings that ask the reader to work it out, but this wasn’t even that. It was like Kate forgot to finish the chapter and it jars with the rest of it.
Books By Your Bedside 