Caroline Bird and Helen Mort
London Review Bookshop Podcast
00:00
Castanova in a Coma
Castanova in coma is the role of a lifetime. You can't corpse. If I'm feeling reckless, I might lift my lids for a second when the room is empty and still just to reassure myself I'm not dead - but that's it. The nurse is marching to change my dirty tubes and funeral silence like I'm already an object. They link arms in a circle, sing hymns, swapping the O Lord bits for my name. Most are singing ironically, but one or two are terrifyingly serious. At dusk, the eldest of the serious ones creeps in the window to sit and stroke my ankle with a feather. It's unnerving. And they'll be correct
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