The Language of Kindness

The Language of Kindness

the Costa-Award winning #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

Summary

Read Costa Award-winning author Christie Watson's incredible No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling memoir of nursing today.

'It made me cry. It made me think. It made me laugh' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt and Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas


Christie Watson was a nurse for twenty years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness.

We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient's agonising heart-lung transplant, and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.

In our most extreme moments, when life is lived most intensely, Christie is with us. She is a guide, mentor and friend. And in these dark days of division and isolationism, she encourages us all to stretch out a hand.

'A powerful insight into the life of nurses' The Times, Books of the Year

'A remarkable book about life and death and so brilliantly written it makes you hold your breath' Ruby Wax

Reviews

  • If it's taken a very long time to get a memoir written by a nurse, then it was certainly worth the wait. I have rarely read anything that has moved me as much or taken me by the hand so confidently into an unknown world, teeming with life and haunted by death... A remarkable book that I will be pressing on everyone I love
    Allison Pearson, The Sunday Telegraph

About the author

Christie Watson

Christie Watson is Professor of Medical Humanities at UEA and worked as an NHS nurse for over twenty years. She has written five books, including her first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which won the Costa First Novel Award, and memoir, The Language of Kindness which was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. Christie is a contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and TEDx, and her work has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre.
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