The Waiting Rooms by Eve Smith

The Waiting Rooms by Eve Smith.
Published in ebook 9th April 2020 and paperback 9th July 2020 by Orenda Books.

What happens in a future where antibiotics no longer have the power to fight infection?

The world becomes a terrifying place, where minor infections can kill, and people are afraid to do things they once took for granted: where sacrifice is required in order to keep the majority safe.

Anyone over the age of seventy is not allowed access to the new treatments being developed, and should they become ill, they face internment in the hospitals for the elderly - the hospitals nicknamed 'The Waiting Rooms', where no one ever recovers.

It is now twenty years after the antibiotic crisis that changed the landscape of human existence, and nurse Kate begins the search for her birth mother. She knows very little about the woman that gave birth to her, other than her name and age, and is unsure about whether she really wants to know more, because her adoptive mother gave her all she ever needed - but something drives her to find out about her own history.

As Kate uncovers some disturbing facts about the mother she has never known, she unwittingly puts herself and her family in danger. It seems that the woman she is searching for has more secrets to hide than just an illegitimate child, and someone else is looking for this woman too...someone with revenge in mind.

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The Waiting Rooms is an absolute chiller of a novel, made all the more terrifying by the fact that this could easily become the dystopian future we are all heading for.

I imagine there can be few of us that have not heard the reports of infections increasingly becoming resistant to modern antibiotics, due to their overuse (and often misuse), and if you are in any doubt about what this might lead to then you need look no further than this book.

For me, the best kind of speculative novel is one which develops a future that is just beyond our experience - one that is so realistic we can almost taste it - and Eve Smith has most certainly achieved this here, in her debut book. I absolutely loved the way she has picked up the scary facts about antibiotic resistance and run with them to develop a future that may well come to pass if we do not stop and take a different path from the one we seem destined to follow, and used this as a backdrop to a gripping story.

But this is not just a book based around hard science, because our author makes it all the more personal in the way she uses her characters to tell the story. 

Kate works as a nurse in one of the 'waiting room' hospitals, albeit one of the nicer ones, so we get to see a close up view of how the elderly are treated, including a hint of the range of treatments that are now no longer possible because of the risks associated with reduced immunity, and the acceptance of euthanasia as an alternative to a prolonged and painful death. But Kate shows us what it is like being a mother in this time too, with the added burden of the additional worries this brings.

We also get a glimpse of the past, through the eyes of Kate's birth mother, a woman now facing the cut-off that comes with her approaching seventieth birthday, which allows us to see the horror that came with the crisis, the uncomfortable political truths behind it and the choices people are forced to make to protect those they love - as well as the reality of being elderly in this world.

And, as an added extra, we get an idea of what it is like to be a young person who has never had the chance to experience the freedoms we all take for granted, from the point of view of Kate's own daughter.

Three women tell us all we need to know about how all aspects of life have changed, and this works beautifully - the fear, the shades of responsibility and guilt, and the consequences of love are all tied up in their stories. 

The Waiting Rooms is certainly dark and compelling, and very accomplished for a debut novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a proper page-turner, even though it absolutely scared me to death, but maybe that is what we all need to be to head-off Eve Smith's vision? This is a must read, with more than a little relevance to the strange days we find ourselves in, and is available now from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Eve Smith and Orenda Books for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

From the cover of the book:

Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. 

Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill. 

A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over seventy is allowed new antibiotics. 

The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’ … 

hospitals where no one ever gets well.

Twenty years after the crisis takes hold, Kate begins a search for her birth mother, 

armed only with her name and her age. As Kate unearths disturbing facts about her mother’s past, she puts her family in danger and risks losing everything. 

Because Kate is not the only secret that her mother is hiding. 

Someone else is looking for her, too.

Sweeping from an all-too-real modern Britain to a pre-crisis South Africa, 

The Waiting Rooms is epic in scope, richly populated with unforgettable characters, 

and a tense, haunting vision of a future that is only a few mutations away.

About the author:

Eve Smith’s debut novel The Waiting Rooms was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award.

Eve writes speculative fiction, mainly about the things that scare her. She attributes her love of all things dark and dystopian to a childhood watching Tales of the Unexpected and black-and-white Edgar Allen Poe double bills. Eve’s flash fiction has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and highly commended for The Brighton Prize.

In this world of questionable facts, stats and news, she believes storytelling is more important than ever to engage people in real life issues.

Eve recently contributed a piece of flash fiction, Belting Up, to an anthology of crime shorts called Noir From the Bar. The collection of stories has been launched to raise money for the NHS.

Eve’s previous job as COO of an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places. 

A Modern Languages graduate from Oxford, she returned to Oxfordshire fifteen years ago to set up home with her husband.

When she’s not writing, she’s chasing across fields after her dog, attempting to organise herself and her family or off exploring somewhere new.