The Waiting Rooms by Eve Smith
Decades of spiraling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill. A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over seventy is allowed new antibiotics. The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’ … hospitals where no one ever gets well.
Twenty years after the crisis takes hold, Kate begins a search for her birth mother, armed only with her name and her age. As Kate unearths disturbing facts about her mother’s past, she puts her family in danger and risks losing everything. Because Kate is not the only secret that her mother is hiding. Someone else is looking for her, too.
Sweeping from an all-too-real modern Britain to a pre-crisis South Africa, The Waiting Rooms is epic in scope, richly populated with unforgettable characters, and a tense, haunting vision of a future that is only a few mutations away.
Author Bio
Eve Smith writes speculative fiction, mainly about the things that scare her.In this world of questionable facts, stats and news, she believes storytelling is more important than ever to engage people in real life issues. Set 20 years after an antibiotic crisis, her debut novel The Waiting Rooms was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award. Her flash fiction has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and highly commended for The Brighton Prize.
Eve's previous job as COO of an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places.
Review
Wow. That’s all I can say about this book is wow. Just joking! But this is a seriously powerful and apt book to read in this current pandemic. It’s a warning of things that might occur if the world’s diseases become resistant to drugs. Hell its already happening. Before 2020 this book would have been classed as an apocalyptic thriller but now….
I loved this book! I devoured it in like two sittings. It’s powerful but yet delicate, threatening yet also peaceful at times, shows that humanity is a thin veneer that can always be broken, and that love can triumph over everything. The pacing of this book was spot on! The multi perspectives of telling the story through the eyes of Mary, Lily and Kate allows the author to drip feed us information both from the present and also the past. It made for a compelling narrative. I honestly could not put this book down!
I found this book to actually be very poetic in places, especially when talking about nature and love. It’s clear the author has either a passion for gardening or they are extremely well researched. The language used in ‘The Waiting Rooms’ is so descriptive that vivid images just fly into your minds eye. Especially the TB ward, the demo outside the hospital, and the peace room in the clinic.
I can’t say too much as otherwise we will get into spoilers but I loved the characters of the three women who narrate this book. They all have strengths and weaknesses. Kate I could not do her job and I don’t know how she could. Mary seemed quite relentless in her quest to obtain something. Lily put people in danger to find out the truth. But all three had a core of inner strength and love at the centre of it.
There is one scene that haunts me a little bit and that’s of the boy hanging on the gate. I can easily see that as occurring now. We all feel rightly anxious and annoyed at things right now but I am actually going to use that wee boy as a guideline now. Is our situation as bad as his? No then buck up and stop complaining you have use a different ply toilet paper. Far too many people have died across the world this year but this book shows it could and can still be so much worse.
