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The Night Interns
Intravenous lines, catheters, bodies in distress, wounds: three young surgical interns working the night shift must care for - and keep alive - the influx of patients, while frightened and uncertain about what the night will throw at them.
The Night Interns beautifully conjures the alien space of the hospital wards and corridors through the viewpoint of one of the interns, as he comes to terms with the bodily reality of the patients and the bizarre instruments of healing. Equally unsettling for the inexperienced junior staff are the dysfunctional hierarchies of the hospital workplace. Under intense pressure and with very little sleep, the interns become inured to their encounters with sickness, all the while searching for the meaning in their work.
By turns moving, shocking, and darkly funny, The Night Interns fizzes with nervous energy, forensic insight and moral tension, as it evokes life and death on the frontline.
The Night Interns beautifully conjures the alien space of the hospital wards and corridors through the viewpoint of one of the interns, as he comes to terms with the bodily reality of the patients and the bizarre instruments of healing. Equally unsettling for the inexperienced junior staff are the dysfunctional hierarchies of the hospital workplace. Under intense pressure and with very little sleep, the interns become inured to their encounters with sickness, all the while searching for the meaning in their work.
By turns moving, shocking, and darkly funny, The Night Interns fizzes with nervous energy, forensic insight and moral tension, as it evokes life and death on the frontline.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 4, 2022
26 people are currently reading
686 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
September 18, 2024
I went into this novella blind, and I am glad I did. Initially I thought I was going to meet some sinister vibes, but I wasn't led down that path. We are told of a small story - small in size only - which centres around a select group of interns and how they make it through their training.
It's another gentle story, it meanders and shows us the way through the world of these young doctors. How they try and capture more sleep, the ways in which they order dinner, look after each other, or not. Their superiors are deplorable, they reek of righteousness and entitlement.
Tasks which they are expected to do without knowledge, figures to be robbed from thin air, operating suites to also be clutched out of nowhere. Some are more confident, some completely lack.
This story has no certain rush about it, there is no expectation of excitement. It surely tells the reader how hard all this stuff must be, then then to lead a life of socialisation outside of the hospital. It all sounds dreadfully hard to maintain.
One senior doc seemed to receive their comeuppance, but this road seems like a long, tiresome and thankless task. This is not the first book I've read on this topic, this really is an issue. Mental health and suicide is mentioned here.
A satisfying and provoking read.
I listened to this via the BorrowBox app and my local library.
It's another gentle story, it meanders and shows us the way through the world of these young doctors. How they try and capture more sleep, the ways in which they order dinner, look after each other, or not. Their superiors are deplorable, they reek of righteousness and entitlement.
Tasks which they are expected to do without knowledge, figures to be robbed from thin air, operating suites to also be clutched out of nowhere. Some are more confident, some completely lack.
This story has no certain rush about it, there is no expectation of excitement. It surely tells the reader how hard all this stuff must be, then then to lead a life of socialisation outside of the hospital. It all sounds dreadfully hard to maintain.
One senior doc seemed to receive their comeuppance, but this road seems like a long, tiresome and thankless task. This is not the first book I've read on this topic, this really is an issue. Mental health and suicide is mentioned here.
A satisfying and provoking read.
I listened to this via the BorrowBox app and my local library.
April 28, 2022
Thank you Netgalley and Granta Publications for the ARC.
What an interesting look into the lives of three night interns. Very entertaining seeing what they have to put up with working in a hospital and all the drama that goes with it. I did not like Lynda or Stuart at all. One was backstabbing and self righteous and the other a coward, but it all made for a very interesting read.
I found this book hard to read. There aren't any chapters and it felt you couldn't really catch a breath. I did enjoy the story and the idea around it very much!
What an interesting look into the lives of three night interns. Very entertaining seeing what they have to put up with working in a hospital and all the drama that goes with it. I did not like Lynda or Stuart at all. One was backstabbing and self righteous and the other a coward, but it all made for a very interesting read.
I found this book hard to read. There aren't any chapters and it felt you couldn't really catch a breath. I did enjoy the story and the idea around it very much!
January 20, 2023
Actual rating 2.5/5 stars.
Three young surgical interns are working the hospital night shift. They are unsure about their roles, their place in the world, and the patients in their care. They must learn to navigate all of this, facing off against their uncertainties, if they are to survive the night.
I read another review for this book that used the word insubstantial to describe it and that has stuck with me as an accurate description. I can foresee this really working for many readers but I, unfortunately, was not one of them.
The protagonists are exhausted, overworked, and anxious. Duffy really allows the reader to experiences this and the almost dream-like writing quality allows the emotions to further permeate. In this instance, the insubstantial qualities are a true positive as this novel felt almost like a fever dream where nothing could be trusted and all should be questioned.
However, in other areas, scenes were featured and I was left wondering what their purpose served. I felt tense whilst reading and and certain that some grand tragedy or catastrophic moment would appear but, when none did, the contents lost some meaning for me and became insubstantial along with the others in the same vein.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, Austin Duffy, and the publisher, Bolinda Audio, for this opportunity.
Three young surgical interns are working the hospital night shift. They are unsure about their roles, their place in the world, and the patients in their care. They must learn to navigate all of this, facing off against their uncertainties, if they are to survive the night.
I read another review for this book that used the word insubstantial to describe it and that has stuck with me as an accurate description. I can foresee this really working for many readers but I, unfortunately, was not one of them.
The protagonists are exhausted, overworked, and anxious. Duffy really allows the reader to experiences this and the almost dream-like writing quality allows the emotions to further permeate. In this instance, the insubstantial qualities are a true positive as this novel felt almost like a fever dream where nothing could be trusted and all should be questioned.
However, in other areas, scenes were featured and I was left wondering what their purpose served. I felt tense whilst reading and and certain that some grand tragedy or catastrophic moment would appear but, when none did, the contents lost some meaning for me and became insubstantial along with the others in the same vein.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, Austin Duffy, and the publisher, Bolinda Audio, for this opportunity.
December 8, 2022
Rating: 2.5
I wasn’t too impressed with this loose, somewhat insubstantial novel. Focusing on a group of three trainee doctors as they walk the wards of an Irish hospital at night, the work feels more like an extended short story. At the sentence level, the novel is satisfactory, but there is minimal narrative drive and characterization is not a strength. The unnamed narrator, well aware of his inexperience and distrustful that the knowledge and skills he does possess are enough to keep him from killing patients, is exhausted and disconnected from others. There’s a brief episode in which he makes a visit home. Sleep-deprived and anxious, unable to engage even with his brother and concerned parents, he attempts to quell his unease by drinking secretively. The spectre of another intern, a gregarious young man whom no one suspected of being so troubled until he fatally threw himself down a hospital stairwell, hangs over the book. A cardiology consultant with marital troubles also dies by suicide.
What the author does manage to communicate well is the toxic hierarchical culture of hospital medicine, the senior doctors puffed up by their power regularly dressing down and humiliating those just beginning their careers.
If Duffy had provided his main character with a back story, some explanation as to why the young man was drawn into medicine in the first place, I feel I might have been more engaged. Instead, he’s settled for more of an impressionistic mood piece, communicating the general feelings of exhaustion and fear that are an intern’s near-constant companions.
I wasn’t too impressed with this loose, somewhat insubstantial novel. Focusing on a group of three trainee doctors as they walk the wards of an Irish hospital at night, the work feels more like an extended short story. At the sentence level, the novel is satisfactory, but there is minimal narrative drive and characterization is not a strength. The unnamed narrator, well aware of his inexperience and distrustful that the knowledge and skills he does possess are enough to keep him from killing patients, is exhausted and disconnected from others. There’s a brief episode in which he makes a visit home. Sleep-deprived and anxious, unable to engage even with his brother and concerned parents, he attempts to quell his unease by drinking secretively. The spectre of another intern, a gregarious young man whom no one suspected of being so troubled until he fatally threw himself down a hospital stairwell, hangs over the book. A cardiology consultant with marital troubles also dies by suicide.
What the author does manage to communicate well is the toxic hierarchical culture of hospital medicine, the senior doctors puffed up by their power regularly dressing down and humiliating those just beginning their careers.
If Duffy had provided his main character with a back story, some explanation as to why the young man was drawn into medicine in the first place, I feel I might have been more engaged. Instead, he’s settled for more of an impressionistic mood piece, communicating the general feelings of exhaustion and fear that are an intern’s near-constant companions.
September 16, 2022
The cover of this book gives a clue as to the atmospheric, dark and brooding nature of the story within. Over a short period of time, three young surgical interns in an Irish hospital navigate the night shift and all that it brings - emergencies, mundane medical tests and procedures, crappy takeaway food, doctor fatigue and death.
Having spent the last 11 nights in hospital with one of my children, I found it haunting in its familiarity (the endless beeping IV drip machine, the wailing patients, the ghostly spectre of the SHO or nurse appearing at 2am to insert a new canula or administer something or other). Hospitals are a whole other universe at night and this book captures that perfectly.
It reads almost like a memoir - perhaps it’s auto-fiction given the author is a practising oncologist in a Dublin hospital?
I loved the different personalities that crop up throughout - the arrogant registrar, the cruel consultant who is ultimately stripped of his dignity (proving we’re all just human at the end of the day), the friendly nurses, the stern sister. It was all perfectly rendered. I’m not sure this is a book that would attract anyone to the medical profession, but it’s an evocative read that captures a mood perfectly.
Having spent the last 11 nights in hospital with one of my children, I found it haunting in its familiarity (the endless beeping IV drip machine, the wailing patients, the ghostly spectre of the SHO or nurse appearing at 2am to insert a new canula or administer something or other). Hospitals are a whole other universe at night and this book captures that perfectly.
It reads almost like a memoir - perhaps it’s auto-fiction given the author is a practising oncologist in a Dublin hospital?
I loved the different personalities that crop up throughout - the arrogant registrar, the cruel consultant who is ultimately stripped of his dignity (proving we’re all just human at the end of the day), the friendly nurses, the stern sister. It was all perfectly rendered. I’m not sure this is a book that would attract anyone to the medical profession, but it’s an evocative read that captures a mood perfectly.
July 14, 2022
4.5
Who the hell would want to be a doctor, huh? Nobody after reading this, that's for sure.
Austin Duffy presents a few weeks of night shifts for three young surgical interns with a kind of clear-eyed realism that is far more captivating than it has any right to be.
We follow these young doctors, at least one of which has little idea what they're doing and even less confidence, as they try to keep a hospital's worth of patients alive long enough for the day shift to arrive. That's it. That's the whole book. And I could barely tear myself away, such were the nightly dramas - small and large - that provide the building tension of this marvellous novel.
I took away several things from the experience. 1) Don't encourage my kids into medicine. 2) Lots of doctors are pricks and I can see why. 3) Most importantly, Austin Duffy is a very fine writer.
Who the hell would want to be a doctor, huh? Nobody after reading this, that's for sure.
Austin Duffy presents a few weeks of night shifts for three young surgical interns with a kind of clear-eyed realism that is far more captivating than it has any right to be.
We follow these young doctors, at least one of which has little idea what they're doing and even less confidence, as they try to keep a hospital's worth of patients alive long enough for the day shift to arrive. That's it. That's the whole book. And I could barely tear myself away, such were the nightly dramas - small and large - that provide the building tension of this marvellous novel.
I took away several things from the experience. 1) Don't encourage my kids into medicine. 2) Lots of doctors are pricks and I can see why. 3) Most importantly, Austin Duffy is a very fine writer.
December 23, 2022
Three interns cover the wards of an Irish hospital. Sleep deprived, in hopelessly over their heads, and at the very bottom of the hospital hierarchy.
It is bleak but kind of beautiful in its own very peculiar way. One for anyone who wants to relive the horror of being ground into almost nothing by a job.
It is bleak but kind of beautiful in its own very peculiar way. One for anyone who wants to relive the horror of being ground into almost nothing by a job.
August 2, 2024
Having recently finished intern year this book hit close to home… It captured the burnout that all healthcare workers can fall victim to. It highlighted the anxiety and self-doubt that comes with intern year, that then gets compounded by the criticism and judgement from colleagues and other hospital staff. Thankfully most hospitals in Ireland have done away with 24+ hour calls, but I hope that someday Doctors schedules are held to the same standards as Pilots.
August 15, 2024
Outstanding . It's over forty years since my days as the lowest of the low and it's taken me this long to want to read anything about hospital life , such was the trauma of the experience. This novel , taking place over a few days in a busy city hospital , captures my experience so perfectly I can hardly fault it . It's a parallel universe and no one within it cares about you; sleep deprivation , bullying , blame , alienation an undeliverable mountain of work blunt the emotions as doctors are bloodied into the world of those that can and those that can't . If you're unlucky you have a tyrant for a consultant , if lucky you might just be seen as a human who needs support. As for patients they are viewed as awkward inconveniences , whose unpredictable crises or unsolvable clinical riddles are unwanted grit in the smooth running of the machine.
In this novel the neglect of the interns is reflected in the unheated , sparse residence where they can nominally sleep or eat takeaways. The long corridors are liminal spaces connecting one site of risk to another . Darkness threatens to engulf them all but the only way to get through is to swallow down emotions and carry on .
There's no plot and , for those who like a story arc , no real resolution or strident analysis . No heros either . Just survivors .
In this novel the neglect of the interns is reflected in the unheated , sparse residence where they can nominally sleep or eat takeaways. The long corridors are liminal spaces connecting one site of risk to another . Darkness threatens to engulf them all but the only way to get through is to swallow down emotions and carry on .
There's no plot and , for those who like a story arc , no real resolution or strident analysis . No heros either . Just survivors .
September 7, 2022
The cover of this book gives a clue as to the atmospheric, dark and brooding nature of the story within.
Over a short period of time, three young surgical interns in an Irish hospital navigate the night shift and all that it brings - emergencies, mundane medical tests and procedures, crappy takeaway food, doctor fatigue and death.
Having spent the last 10 nights in hospital with one of my children, I found it haunting in its familiarity (the endless beeping IV drip machine, the wailing patients, the ghostly spectre of the SHO or nurse appearing at 2am to insert a new canula or administer something or other). Hospitals are a whole other universe at night and this book captures that perfectly.
It reads almost like a memoir - perhaps it’s auto-fiction given the author is a practising oncologist in a Dublin hospital?
I loved the different personalities that crop up throughout - the arrogant registrar, the cruel consultant who is ultimately stripped of his dignity (proving we’re all just human at the end of the day), the friendly nurses, the stern sister. It was all perfectly rendered. I’m not sure this is a book that would attract anyone to the medical profession, but it’s an evocative read that captures a mood perfectly.
Over a short period of time, three young surgical interns in an Irish hospital navigate the night shift and all that it brings - emergencies, mundane medical tests and procedures, crappy takeaway food, doctor fatigue and death.
Having spent the last 10 nights in hospital with one of my children, I found it haunting in its familiarity (the endless beeping IV drip machine, the wailing patients, the ghostly spectre of the SHO or nurse appearing at 2am to insert a new canula or administer something or other). Hospitals are a whole other universe at night and this book captures that perfectly.
It reads almost like a memoir - perhaps it’s auto-fiction given the author is a practising oncologist in a Dublin hospital?
I loved the different personalities that crop up throughout - the arrogant registrar, the cruel consultant who is ultimately stripped of his dignity (proving we’re all just human at the end of the day), the friendly nurses, the stern sister. It was all perfectly rendered. I’m not sure this is a book that would attract anyone to the medical profession, but it’s an evocative read that captures a mood perfectly.
June 29, 2023
DNF at 162 very boring, had a lot of potential which was disappointing. No plot
May 6, 2022
The Night interns feels like it could be more of memoir but I liked it. The story about three interns that work nights and you see the pressure that they have to come with the demand of the job and the people in charge of them. I read this in two days, it’s quite short book. There was no chapters but I liked how the author did this. I found interesting to see what the interns where going though. I read it all the way through and I liked the author writing style.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.
June 24, 2023
Re-traumatising
March 30, 2024
I don’t really know how to feel about it. I can really understand the struggle of the intern, which by the way we never learned the name of, but I couldn’t really relate and understand all the words. Greys Anatomy helped a bit I guess but I think this book is for people who work in the hospitals. It was a bit sad, I hoped the main character and Lynda would get together but no. I also felt it was not fair for the main characters work and peoples attitudes towards him worsened through the book while Lynda and Stuart got much better.
I kinda regret reading it? Now I never want to work in the medical field. But I think it can give comfort for those who already do.
I kinda regret reading it? Now I never want to work in the medical field. But I think it can give comfort for those who already do.
August 22, 2025
This book is like a Slice of Life with interns in a hospital. It was a pleasant read and had a lot of interesting info about working in a hospital at night. The book often builds up certain narratives and then completely tosses them to the side instead of giving the reader a satisfying catastrophe. This bothered me but after some thinking I came to the conclusion that life is often like that. You get invested in certain patients and then you will never know what became of them. So truly a Slice of Life book!
October 24, 2022
4.5*
This is one of those stories that throws you into the characters’ lives at a random moment, then meanders across a number of days and events before quietly departing without a huge amount having happened. I love these slice of life type of books, especially here, where the characters are doing something so far removed from my own life.
With the author being a medical professional himself, this definitely felt like it had memoir elements to it, whilst still being a fictional story. I find books about people working in the medical profession really fascinating, even if I don’t understand everything I’m reading, and this was no exception.
I felt like the writing style cleverly reflected the mood of being an intern in a hospital. One the one hand, the whole thing felt very melancholy and lonely, and on the other, with the use of no chapters and long sentences, it also felt quite breathless and busy. I loved the way Austin wrote, it was easy to follow and held my attention making this a quick read.
There wasn’t much of a plot being followed but this certainly cemented the fact that working in a hospital or as a health professional would not be something I could handle doing. This book highlighted the stress, the demanding and unhelpful people you may get stuck working with and the complicated processes you have to go through to get anything done. Not to mention the trauma of being unable to help patients and the heavy mental toll it can take.
I guess this book surprised me a little because I found myself feeling quite attached to our narrator by the end and I found following their day-to-day life equally interesting and tiresome. Overall a great read for me and something I would recommend to lovers of character-driven stories where not a lot happens in terms of plot or anyone who likes reading books about hospitals and their day-to-day running.
Ad-pr product from Granta Books.
This is one of those stories that throws you into the characters’ lives at a random moment, then meanders across a number of days and events before quietly departing without a huge amount having happened. I love these slice of life type of books, especially here, where the characters are doing something so far removed from my own life.
With the author being a medical professional himself, this definitely felt like it had memoir elements to it, whilst still being a fictional story. I find books about people working in the medical profession really fascinating, even if I don’t understand everything I’m reading, and this was no exception.
I felt like the writing style cleverly reflected the mood of being an intern in a hospital. One the one hand, the whole thing felt very melancholy and lonely, and on the other, with the use of no chapters and long sentences, it also felt quite breathless and busy. I loved the way Austin wrote, it was easy to follow and held my attention making this a quick read.
There wasn’t much of a plot being followed but this certainly cemented the fact that working in a hospital or as a health professional would not be something I could handle doing. This book highlighted the stress, the demanding and unhelpful people you may get stuck working with and the complicated processes you have to go through to get anything done. Not to mention the trauma of being unable to help patients and the heavy mental toll it can take.
I guess this book surprised me a little because I found myself feeling quite attached to our narrator by the end and I found following their day-to-day life equally interesting and tiresome. Overall a great read for me and something I would recommend to lovers of character-driven stories where not a lot happens in terms of plot or anyone who likes reading books about hospitals and their day-to-day running.
Ad-pr product from Granta Books.
May 6, 2022
The Night interns feels like it could be more of memoir but I liked it. The story about three interns that work nights and you see the pressure that they have to come with the demand of the job and the people in charge of them. I read this in two days, it’s quite short book. There was no chapters but I liked how the author did this. I found interesting to see what the interns where going though. I read it all the way through and I liked the author writing style.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.
August 13, 2022
“But it was always a mystery what the body underneath was getting up to, what angry rebellion it was instituting beyond the scope of your awareness”.
There was a beautiful balance between the factual content in this book like; the medical terminology and the lingo shared between hospital staff and then, the plot of the three interns, Arnie and Hunratty’s stories, the relationships between workers and Sharif and Lynch. At no point did the details of medical procedures every feel unnecessary. I think Duffy explores the feeling of responsibility and guilt as a doctor thoughtfully.
There was a beautiful balance between the factual content in this book like; the medical terminology and the lingo shared between hospital staff and then, the plot of the three interns, Arnie and Hunratty’s stories, the relationships between workers and Sharif and Lynch. At no point did the details of medical procedures every feel unnecessary. I think Duffy explores the feeling of responsibility and guilt as a doctor thoughtfully.
October 12, 2022
A little repetitive, all the time waiting for something to happen. The life of interns, pretty miserable, wouldn't instill confidence if heading into the public system!!
April 25, 2025
it was okay, you really felt transported into the world the interns were experiencing, with all of the exhaustion and stress and guilt. However it was quite a boring read, and at points I found the characters quite shallow.
August 27, 2023
Plot-less story of what its like to be an intern, was fine
September 10, 2023
I enjoyed the writing-style and thought it was quite fresh and different. There were no quotation marks for speech but instead, they were put in bullet points or just within the rest of the text.
I can understand why some people might not like this, but I found it quite refreshing to read something executed so differently.
The story itself was quite interesting, just following the general duties of an intern on his team. Nothing amazing and no real plot, but I found I enjoyed it.
I can understand why some people might not like this, but I found it quite refreshing to read something executed so differently.
The story itself was quite interesting, just following the general duties of an intern on his team. Nothing amazing and no real plot, but I found I enjoyed it.
December 29, 2023
Interesting read. It had an eerie or ominous feeling I associated with a night shift at a hospital - time starts to blend together and you become a bit on edge waiting for the next crisis that could happen.
December 4, 2023
Reads more like a medical autobiography than a novel.
Very readable but little in the way of plot, relationships or character development.
Very readable but little in the way of plot, relationships or character development.
October 16, 2024
I felt the first half of this novel was weak but the writing is so much more taut and interesting as the story goes on.
August 2, 2022
In The Night Interns, an unnamed intern in an unnamed Irish city goes through a year of night shifts with his two colleagues, Lynda and Stuart.
The disorienting effect of sleep disturbance and overwork gives their lives an intense, hypnotic quality, characterised by both petty irritation and a peculiar intimacy. When they see each other by day, they barely acknowledge each other, as if their night-time liaison is something secret and apart.
On the one hand they are part of a large organisation, constantly churning around them, on the other the three of them form an island, aloof from all others, making their own rules and rituals, from their nightly takeaways to their bickering collaboration.
The narrator defines himself less on his own terms than in his relationship to his fellow interns. He sees Lynda as clever, confident and driven, never making a mistake, while Stuart is weak, passive and lacking in confidence. But as the story develops, these assumptions are thrown into question, and by inference, so is the narrator’s perception of himself.
The lack of chapters suggests the sense for the characters that this is one endless ordeal, with no structure or arc. In TV medical dramas, there’s the shift from exhaustion and relentless drudgery to that moment of adrenalin when everything changes, a life is saved, a complex procedure successfully undertaken, an obscure diagnosis plucked from years of numbing study. For our narrator, there is no such relief. There is only the relentless, continual going on, a feeling that he is forever out of his depth.
Duffy captures the petty absurdities and cruelties of institutional life – something that I’ve noticed particularly in residential settings, perhaps because there is never a break to reset the culture. They are called unnecessarily, at inconvenient times. Each ward has its own system of organising its store cupboards. Whenever the interns are called to a new ward to deal with an incident, they have to struggle to find what they need. Nursing and support staff look on with amusement and refuse to step in, even though lives are potentially at stake.
They are perhaps taking revenge for other slights, from other doctors. The hospital runs on a hierarchy of contempt – there’s a poignant portrait of an immigrant registrar who is bullied by his consultant, but sympathy is undermined when he goes on to take it out on his interns. There are also references to darker events taking place off stage, events which might concern the narrator, if only he wasn’t so tired.
Of course, doctors need to be both clever and have fantastic stamina, to take decisions under pressure, to carry on even when they feel like curling up in a ball and sleeping. But is this hazing really the best way? Does it build character or does the pointless pettiness just brutalise them so they’ll go on and do the same when it’s their turn?
I loved the terse, downbeat prose of The Night Interns, the moments of bleak humour that highlight the absurdity of the system. Although the subject matter is different, the writing reminded me of Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor.
What’s so brilliant is that from small events, Duffy does craft a compelling story with a sense, by the end, that the narrator has irrevocably changed. A short, intense and immersive read.
*
I received a copy of The Night Interns from the publisher via Netgalley.
The disorienting effect of sleep disturbance and overwork gives their lives an intense, hypnotic quality, characterised by both petty irritation and a peculiar intimacy. When they see each other by day, they barely acknowledge each other, as if their night-time liaison is something secret and apart.
On the one hand they are part of a large organisation, constantly churning around them, on the other the three of them form an island, aloof from all others, making their own rules and rituals, from their nightly takeaways to their bickering collaboration.
The narrator defines himself less on his own terms than in his relationship to his fellow interns. He sees Lynda as clever, confident and driven, never making a mistake, while Stuart is weak, passive and lacking in confidence. But as the story develops, these assumptions are thrown into question, and by inference, so is the narrator’s perception of himself.
The lack of chapters suggests the sense for the characters that this is one endless ordeal, with no structure or arc. In TV medical dramas, there’s the shift from exhaustion and relentless drudgery to that moment of adrenalin when everything changes, a life is saved, a complex procedure successfully undertaken, an obscure diagnosis plucked from years of numbing study. For our narrator, there is no such relief. There is only the relentless, continual going on, a feeling that he is forever out of his depth.
Duffy captures the petty absurdities and cruelties of institutional life – something that I’ve noticed particularly in residential settings, perhaps because there is never a break to reset the culture. They are called unnecessarily, at inconvenient times. Each ward has its own system of organising its store cupboards. Whenever the interns are called to a new ward to deal with an incident, they have to struggle to find what they need. Nursing and support staff look on with amusement and refuse to step in, even though lives are potentially at stake.
They are perhaps taking revenge for other slights, from other doctors. The hospital runs on a hierarchy of contempt – there’s a poignant portrait of an immigrant registrar who is bullied by his consultant, but sympathy is undermined when he goes on to take it out on his interns. There are also references to darker events taking place off stage, events which might concern the narrator, if only he wasn’t so tired.
Of course, doctors need to be both clever and have fantastic stamina, to take decisions under pressure, to carry on even when they feel like curling up in a ball and sleeping. But is this hazing really the best way? Does it build character or does the pointless pettiness just brutalise them so they’ll go on and do the same when it’s their turn?
I loved the terse, downbeat prose of The Night Interns, the moments of bleak humour that highlight the absurdity of the system. Although the subject matter is different, the writing reminded me of Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor.
What’s so brilliant is that from small events, Duffy does craft a compelling story with a sense, by the end, that the narrator has irrevocably changed. A short, intense and immersive read.
*
I received a copy of The Night Interns from the publisher via Netgalley.
October 1, 2022
This is an unusual book in many ways, which I thoroughly enjoyed and is very well written. I am an avid reader and usually avoid any books with medical sentiment, being a consultant doctor myself. In fact I went through the experience of the intern in the same city as the protagonist (although different hospital) and many of the sentiments described rang so true. The beauty and the pain of this particular job in this particular health care system at that time (more than 20 years ago). Both the helplessness one can feel as a junior doctor at the bottom of the scale (like trying to arrange CT scan for a patient- I still remember this as an injust trauma!) but also the satisfaction of being able to help, as well as the frustration of the frivolous tasks and dodging the tempers of the often power abusing emotionally damaged senior doctors. The feeling of not having been outside feeling the fresh air for days on end, and the kind of time warp one lives in during this particular year of your life is expressed sensitively and not overly dramatic. The lack of chapters perfectly echoes the endless feeling of the work day and night, weeks and months. My one critique would be that medical terms are used frequently and abundantly and wouldn’t be understood by a non medic, but perhaps the choice of presenting it in this way in fact adds to the realism and harsh reality of the hospital life. The book is uniquely Irish aswell, hidden in the interactions and feelings, as well as the hierarchy, and having lived abroad for 20 years I can see this refreshing and frustrating Irishness shine through every page. I would be interested to hear how my non medical reading friends would perceive this book. This book brought me back to one of the most difficult and unpleasant years of my life but the gentle acceptance of the protagonist to his lot was fascinating read.
If the author by any chance reads the reviews- congratulations Austin!
If the author by any chance reads the reviews- congratulations Austin!
June 24, 2022
I really enjoyed this one. I especially loved how the book managed to be both funny and quietly heartbreaking; the writing style was excellent, too -- I liked that we were thrown right in, with no exposition or explanation, or rather, the author gave things time to explain themselves (personally, I think there's nothing worse than having stuff shoved down your throat). Also, he has a true gift of saying things without spelling them out, i.e. the whole Lynda situation, or the narrator's feelings about Arnie and what happened to him.
I truly got the feeling of the night hospital as a world in itself, with its empty hallways and strange wards ruled over by faceless yet opinionated nurses; a world where it's forever dark outside, the surrounding city is as far away as the moon (and feels just as real), and everyone is asleep except for the nurses and a handful of unlucky souls, and of course the three lonely, tired, overworked interns tasked with overseeing it all and trying to stave off various impending (real or perceived) catastrophes while struggling with feelings of responsibility as well as inexperience and self-doubt.
My only complaint is that it wasn't longer; I would have liked to spend more time with our nameless (I think?) narrator.
Also, I'm glad I never considered a career in medicine.
My sincere thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
I truly got the feeling of the night hospital as a world in itself, with its empty hallways and strange wards ruled over by faceless yet opinionated nurses; a world where it's forever dark outside, the surrounding city is as far away as the moon (and feels just as real), and everyone is asleep except for the nurses and a handful of unlucky souls, and of course the three lonely, tired, overworked interns tasked with overseeing it all and trying to stave off various impending (real or perceived) catastrophes while struggling with feelings of responsibility as well as inexperience and self-doubt.
My only complaint is that it wasn't longer; I would have liked to spend more time with our nameless (I think?) narrator.
Also, I'm glad I never considered a career in medicine.
My sincere thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
November 16, 2025
Note to self: do not read books about your day job during the weekend
This book focuses on the lives inside the hospital of three interns (known as resident doctors in the UK) primarily on their night shifts. It was a very easy read and I was pleasantly surprised that most of the medicine and terminology was accurate (it did very grate on me when they referred to cannulating the elbow). Also the amount of out-of-hours cannulas and antibiotics being routinely required did strike me as slightly bizarre. Anyways, if I get into the technicalities there were a few parts that seemed unrealistic or unreasonable but I feel it went some way towards generally capturing the feeling of the hospital at night and the exhaustion of the work.
Overall, an easy read but the characters weren’t particularly fleshed out or likeable and the book itself felt quite skeletal. There was plenty of mundane recounting of the day-to-day but I thought it lacked the poetry and depth I was hoping for. Also the surgeons were absolutely deplorable characters with no anger management skills. And yes I’ve had experiences surgeons with awful temperaments but this, alongside the multiple physician suicides (spoiler) and lack of any proper life lived by the protagonist outside the hospital, made the whole book feel quite bleak.
This book focuses on the lives inside the hospital of three interns (known as resident doctors in the UK) primarily on their night shifts. It was a very easy read and I was pleasantly surprised that most of the medicine and terminology was accurate (it did very grate on me when they referred to cannulating the elbow). Also the amount of out-of-hours cannulas and antibiotics being routinely required did strike me as slightly bizarre. Anyways, if I get into the technicalities there were a few parts that seemed unrealistic or unreasonable but I feel it went some way towards generally capturing the feeling of the hospital at night and the exhaustion of the work.
Overall, an easy read but the characters weren’t particularly fleshed out or likeable and the book itself felt quite skeletal. There was plenty of mundane recounting of the day-to-day but I thought it lacked the poetry and depth I was hoping for. Also the surgeons were absolutely deplorable characters with no anger management skills. And yes I’ve had experiences surgeons with awful temperaments but this, alongside the multiple physician suicides (spoiler) and lack of any proper life lived by the protagonist outside the hospital, made the whole book feel quite bleak.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 22, 2023
in the words of abby lee miller : boring. yawning. sloppy. lazy. (i dnfed but i was over half way thru so i’m counting it) (and it still wasn’t as bad as it ends with us)
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