I bought ten short novels/novellas to read on my Autumn commute to save carrying too much weight and started in the first week of September with Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017.

As the title suggests, this follows the protagonist, Amanda, as she lies in hospital, trapped in a feverish dream as she lays dying. It is written in her voice as she tries to grasp at what has happened to her daughter, who has in fact, along with her mother, been poisoned by polluted water after chemicals are dumped in a stream. Amanda is agitated, as she tries to piece together fragments of memories, and as she has a disjointed conversation with David, who is at her bedside, about David’s mother. How this relates to her daughter, Nina, Amanda increasingly desperately tries to find out, as she begins to run out of time.

This is chilling and disturbing but unlike anything I have ever read.