The handbook for compassion... a must-read book

She repeatedly finds the beam of light in the darkest rooms... Watson is a terrific guide to the gritty reality of hospital life... We have never needed their [nurses'] expertise more than we do now

Now more than ever, nurses are on our minds and in our hearts. Christie writes with beauty and compassion about how they do their jobs. When I wasn't crying, I was marvelling

Magnificent... timely and resonant... In these unprecedented times, Watson challenges the rest of us to be more like nurses and to find the courage to care, no matter who is in need

An inspiring book for our challenging times. It's never been more important to care for one another and the amazing Christie Watson shows us the way

Watson writes with wry humour and a cheerful, conversational tone, but the world of care she describes - mental health wards, dying children or neglected elderly patients - is often hard to bear... [The Courage to Care] is a love letter to her profession; her admiration for her colleagues shines through every story

In this timely read, Watson, a former nurse who returned to work in critical care during the coronavirus peak, tells stories both heart-in-mouth and humbling. She reveals the extraordinary, beyond-the-call-of-duty work that nurses do, and the bravery of the patients and families they care for

I loved The Courage to Care - Christie Watson writes so tenderly and truthfully. It is a spirit-lifting read

Watson has an unflinching eye for detail, and her ability to put the reader in the room means that we too bear witness... As Watson explains in her introduction, she has been talking and writing about the importance of nurses for years, but Covid-19 - which came along as she was making her final edits to the book - has made her subject more poignant and timely

Inspirational

Generous, intimate and insightful. The Courage to Care is persuasive and powerful as a memoir of a remarkable twenty-year career, and also an adventure story through the shifting landscape of NHS nursing. This book shows why nurses top the polls every year as the most trusted, reliable professionals.

Christie's a former nurse and she's such a powerful writer on caring and what it means to do it

Christie Watson writes with clarity, generosity and wisdom; her words make us feel less alone

This beautiful book captures magnificently the rawness, courage and tenderness of nursing. It made me cry, smile and gasp out loud. It sings with humanity

A call to arms and soul-baring personal odyssey, this book will set hearts and minds on fire. Very few writers can make you care this much, and make you laugh, bawl and stay up all night reading to the final page. Christie Watson writes with the sharpest wit, the finest observations, and has a heart as deep and wild as a river

Christie Watson has once again proved she is the pre-eminent voice of the nursing memoir

Marvellous... A chronicle of the human experience written with all the sensitivity and empathy of an experienced nurse. A courageous account of our inequitable healthcare system. A magnificent collection of stories that describes primal pain, the joy of human connection and the beauty of life through the lens of a compassionate nurse, daughter and mother

An urgent, powerful, beautiful book, filled with courage, love and hope

As we all try to work out the impact of COVID-19 on our lives, The Courage to Care is essential reading about the extraordinary work that nurses carry out every day

This book looks inside the heart of a profession, the life of a family, and the condition of being human. Beautiful, thoughtful and compelling

Absolutely beautiful writing, Christie Watson captures both the intense joy and searing heartbreak of love

A salute to the profession, the book is also a mediation on motherhood

An insightful reminder of exactly how vital it is to treat one another with kindness and compassion, at a time when we need it most

A no-nonsense crib sheet on the state of the world and how to help it

If his book falls into the hands of the powerful then it could just save the planet. At the very least, it will provide some thought-provoking facts

Punchy and to the point. No beating around the bush. This brilliant book contains all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward

Visceral and haunting...This novel's prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet's landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates...The Last Migration is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over

Dreamy, elegiac... both an adventure story and a piece of speculative climate fiction, constantly slipping between a kind of literary realism and more magical elements, between moments of domestic drama and sweeping epic... an aching and poignant book, and one that's pressing in its timeliness... It's also a book about love, about trying to understand and accept the creatureliness that exists within our selves, and what it means to be a human animal, that we might better accommodate our own wildness within the world.

Gutting and gorgeous, The Last Migration is an astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, Charlotte McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope. Equal parts love letter and dirge, this is a true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish

At a time when it feels like we're at the end of the world, this novel about a different kind of end of the world serves as both catharsis and escape

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairy-tale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart

Powerful...Vibrant...Unique... If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, The Last Migration - the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge - flutters off into more expansive territory

How far do we have to go to escape our pasts and find ourselves? Charlotte McConaghy’s luminous, brilliant novel, set in a future when wildlife is rapidly becoming extinct, is indeed about loss—but what makes it miraculous is that it is also about both the glimpses of hope and the shattering persistence of love, if we are only brave enough to acknowledge them. Written in prose as gorgeous as the crystalline beauty of the Arctic, The Last Migration is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important

A lovely, haunting novel about a troubled woman’s quest to follow the last surviving Arctic terns on their southerly migration. As she tries to make peace with the ghosts of her painful past, she must choose whether she herself wants – or deserves – to survive, in spite of everything she, and all humans, have destroyed and lost

This book is a powerful - and entertaining - corrective to the idea that the only hopes that matter on this planet are those of our own species.

Macdonald has a wonderful gift for exploring the intersection between nature and our experience of it, in writing that is both lyrical and impassioned.

One of the most beautiful memoirs I've ever read. This story will say with you long after you put the book down

I just turned the last page (reluctantly!). A bold, often brutal exploration of memory, grief and love. Full of hope and heart. I can't recommend it enough

A brave, brilliant book that is both beautiful and important. Read it then buy it for all your friends

Gavanndra's memoir The Consequences of Love is absolutely beautiful. It's compelling, heartbreaking, sweet, honest, fascination. I recommend it HIGHLY. I absolutely LOVED it.

This stunning exploration of grief is so well written and profoundly moving

An elegant study of grief and memory

Hodge pours heartbreak and love into the pages of a book that never pretends to know the answers, and is all the better for it

An eye-opening snapshot of the fashion world in '90s London