March’s read for the Hoboken Public Library’s Horror/Thriller book club was part unhinged, grotesque imagery, and unreliable sanity. The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling enticed our group with its synopsis hindering the instinctual defenses to survive at any cost.
When you have perhaps one last thread to save your existence, in this case an experimental medical procedure that destroys your immune system so that it can be rebuilt, how many of us would be tempted not to take the risk? That’s the moral conundrum that ticks on every page.
When that primal instinct comes in play, for me that’s what truly makes the horror genre great, and Caitlin Starling blends an unreliable narrator mixed with imagery and angst of the COVID-19 pandemic all left to fester in a petri dish of suffering and sly corporate slouthing and conniving.
Some parts are slow, the protagonist gets too in the weeds with her thoughts and her second guessing sometimes goes over the top. Then again, if walls were coming alive and floors eating people all mixed with the hospital living, breathing, and speaking to me, I’d probably be this way, too.
Margaret (Meg) Carpenter has a severe immune disorder that has destroyed her insides, allowing her to do very little and maintain almost no relationships (personal and professional). Her life is falling apart and she’s destitute. She will latch onto anything, including her nurses and the nightly cleaning crew.
My heart was strung tight for the majority of this book, but it also somehow found a way to be thankful – thankful for what hospital staff and the medical community must endure to keep us safe – the terror of dealing with patients that are so sick or in desperate positions that they morph the world around them.
In the end, it’s a radical commentary on the blending of medical ethics and extreme treatment that blurs the line of how far we may be willing to go in our loss of agency to save our lives.
Interested in the Horror/Thriller Book Club? Please email reference@hobokenlibrary.org, or register for our next meeting by searching under Events on our website.
Have you read The Graceview Patient? What did you think? Comment below.
You can reserve it in the BCCLS system here, or access the ebook and audiobook on Hoopla.
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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant
Hoboken Library Staff Picks 
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