The Night Interns has some scathing reviews, but I really enjoyed it. Perhaps it was more relatable to me as a medical doctor (it was). So much of it resonated with me, even the slightly morose atmosphere reminded me of the imposing academic hospital where I trained.

Duffy accurately captures the experience of failures and successes, the living and the dead, and the experience of being a brand new intern. It feels so REAL. I wholeheartedly recommend this to readers with an interest in the medical world.

Content warning for suicide.

For me this is a weak 3 stars, strong 2 stars as whilst i did finish it, i can't say i loved this story. The premise was interesting and I liked how it was delivered but it didn't work for me overall. I found some of the supporting to feel weak when compared to scenes they are in. I think that the novel does work overall but it's not one i would re-read even though it does play with some interesting ideas in it.

I didn’t like the characters at all. They were unkind people. There are no chapters at all and this makes the book a long slog. However I did enjoy the story but not the style of writing

DNF - I am tempted to try the audiobook version of this if I can find it. I wasn't able to immerse myself in the story reading it this way so I suppose it might have been a case of the format I used. The premise is so interesting.

"Night Interns" is a captivating and thought-provoking debut novel by Austin Duffy. Set in a hospital in Dublin, the story follows the lives of a group of medical interns working long hours through the night shift. The novel explores the physical and emotional toll of working in a high-pressure environment, the personal struggles of the characters, and the complexities of the medical profession.

One of the strengths of the novel is its ability to capture the realities of the medical field with honesty and accuracy. Duffy draws from his own experiences as a doctor to create a vivid and authentic portrayal of hospital life. The novel's descriptive language and attention to detail make the hospital setting come alive, and the medical jargon used by the characters adds to the sense of realism.

Another notable aspect of "Night Interns" is its exploration of the personal lives of the characters. The novel delves into their relationships, family dynamics, and personal struggles, giving readers a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by medical professionals outside of the hospital setting. Duffy's writing is both sensitive and insightful, allowing readers to empathize with the characters and their experiences.

Overall, "Night Interns" is a compelling and engaging read that offers a unique glimpse into the world of medicine. Duffy's writing is both evocative and realistic, making this debut novel a must-read for anyone interested in the medical profession or simply looking for a well-crafted and thought-provoking story.

I thought this was such a fantastic book - Austin Duffy is a new author to me, but having also now read and loved Ten Days, I'll definitely be seeking out more of his writing. The setting of the hospital felt so distinctive and so well-researched, I was completely immersed in the environment of these characters. Although there are definitely bleak and upsetting moments as the night shifts unravel and become more difficult, I was really rooting for the narrator and his friends the entire time. Overall a compelling and superbly-written read.

Claustrophobic, fascinating , and with ripples of dark humour, this is a story beautifully told from the inside.. Medical memoirs are very popular these days but having a doctor write a novel brings a whole new depth to the reading experience

The Night Interns by Austin Duffy

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, takes us on a journey into the alien world of a hospital in the middle of the night. I’ve been in enough to recognise the hushed quiet punctuated with strange cries, muffled instructions and the sudden hustle towards an insistent alarm. Here we follow an unnamed intern experiencing a year of night shifts with colleagues Lynda and Stuart, in an Irish hospital.

I loved the atmosphere the author created, from the sense of disorientation that comes from having their sleep constantly disturbed to the sheer amount of hours the interns work. It gives the book a tension and a sense that at some point, one of them will break. The night setting has a weird, hypnotic, feel and the whispered conversations feel much more intimate. We don’t usually see others at night and the interns are no different, so in the day there’s a strange shyness with each other as if they’ve seen some side of each other they shouldn’t. Despite being just another cog in the giant machine of the health service, these three interns seem separate from it. The repetition of working the same wards, for the same hours each night has brought these three together, separate from everyone else. Thrown quickly into some difficult situations the three have bonded and formed their own ritualistic community with takeaways every evening, in-jokes and bickering.

We only get a sense of our narrator through the other interns, Lynda and Stuart. Our impression of them, is through our narrator’s observations and perceptions. He sees them as opposites: where Lynda is intelligent and driven, Stuart is passive and under confident. Lynda doesn’t make mistakes either and is very confident in her approach. However, as the story developed I started to question our narrator’s judgement. The others seem to act against his perceptions and if he’s wrong about them, what about his perception of himself?

The structure of the novel adds to the claustrophobic and repetitive feeling of the doctor’s shifts. If we watch a TV drama there’s usually a disaster or sudden triumphant life saving moment that lifts the drudgery of a normal shift. We don’t get that shot of adrenaline here. There are no chapters, giving the sense of one long ordeal that never ends. In TV medical dramas, even the ones I was reminded of while reading, like Bodies or Cardiac Arrest, there’s always a story arc. This feels like the reality of being a junior doctor, endless drudgery with no end in sight. It’s no wonder the suicide rate for young doctors is so high. Our narrator is relentlessly under prepared and out of his depth.

Another aspect that the author captures beautifully, are the petty rivalries of this type of institution – something that I’ve noticed through being a patient and in my working life. I observed it when my terminally I’ll husband had peritonitis from a badly installed feeding tube. It needed to be removed, but because it was put in by a different trust, our hospital didn’t have the tool to remove it. When they requested it to be sent, our original trust refused. So the surgical team had to ring round the trusts to find another that would help. In the meantime he couldn’t be fed. I couldn’t understand how petty it was. In the novel, every ward has its own way of organising its stores, so when the interns were called to a new ward to deal with an incident, they struggled to find the equipment they needed. Instead of helping, the regular nurses and support staff would watch on, laughing amongst themselves and not moving to help. Even where a life was in the balance. I could see how staff thought they were getting back at a pompous or rude consultant, but really it just added to the interns stress and sense of confidence. There’s that sense in the hierarchy of a doctor’s team, that they had it hard when they trained, so when they became consultants they bullied their interns in the same way. Some of this bullying is serious and puts lives at risk, but it’s hard to care when you’ve had no sleep for a week. The consultants and registrars argue that candidates need to be tough and have what it takes to succeed, but is bullying the right way to achieve this?

The humour here is bleak, again rather like Jed Mercurio’s Bodies, and the mood relentlessly downbeat. It’s not an easy read, but it is a compelling and realistic story. We watch on as very slowly, our narrator changes beyond recognition.

As expected from a short book, I read this one rather quickly, and despite the lack of chapters (which for me reflected the nature of working in a hospital without having clear-cut breaks), I found it hard to put down. I'm not entirely sure I got the 'point' of the book, and what the author was trying to say through the story, but it's a well-written and interesting read nevertheless. Having worked in a hospital myself, I liked seeing my own experiences mirrored in the setting—finding yourself in an empty radiology department is a truly creepy experience when you're used to one-way systems down bustling corridors because of how busy they are during the day.

I don't think I would reread this book, which is why it's only getting a four-star rating from me, but I'm glad I read it!

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.

This was a very good and very unique style for a novel. I really enjoyed reading it. It definitely felt more like I was reading a autobiography/memoir than a novel. This just really intrigued me all the more. I couldn't believe how life like the novel was. Its just nothing like I have ever read before in a fiction book. It was wrote so well with it flowing amazingly. It was a great medium paced book. I think it's only downside was it lacked a dramatical event that speeds up the story to an exciting end. Yes there was drama but it certainly didn't take the way I was expecting it to or would of wanted it too, to get that 5th star as it definitely had the potential. I really liked the characters which had plenty of differences. I definitely warmed to them and sometimes they felt familiar. I will definitely be looking out for more books by this author.  

So much praise goes out to the author and publishers for creating this brilliant and intriguing story that im sure you will love too.
The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog yesterday https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/the-night-interns-by-austin-duffy-granta-publishing-4-stars either under my name or ladyreading365

This is not the sort of thing I usually read but I thought I would give it a go as the cover is beautiful and I am so happy I did. A wonderful story that I just could not put down. Thank you for such an enjoyable experience.

The Night Interns by Austin Duffy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We follow three surgical interns, fresh out of their degrees and facing call - the out of hours work done on top of your full time weekday job. Lynda has excellent clinical skills but is obnoxious and arrogant, Stuart is paralysed by fear almost to be point of incompetence & our nameless narrator is trying to find his place.

The doctors seem mostly numb to patients, with a feeling of constant dread and fear. They are haunted by the recent death of a colleague by suicide in the stairwell. The book is written without any chapters to give a reprieve and really captures that awful, hallucinatory feel of constant work and cycling between day and night shifts.

The book picks through a lot of the systemic issues that makes medicine so draining. Long working hours, inpatient lists that stretch and stretch without an increase in staff. Bullying in every direction - throughout the medical hierarchy, nursing staff, even the guy delivery the Chinese is blisteringly angry.

You really see how isolated the doctors can become, despite being surrounded by colleagues, and the humiliation they experience at the hands of their colleagues.

I have met many iterations of these characters in my various jobs (I think I had 19 hospital jobs), so it is true to life. What you don’t see reflected in the book are the rest of the interns (and other drs) who are actually enjoying themselves and thriving!

My gut reaction is to be appalled at a lot of the carry on of various characters, but then I found myself seeing glimpses of myself in these characters. This is the joy of reading!

I would recommend this book to any aspiring or current healthcare workers - get a glimpse into some of the darker realities of the jobs. Maybe I should write a book about all the very pleasant parts - no one would stick it otherwise if this was all there was! Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

The Night Interns by Austin Duffy.

In an unnamed Irish hospital, three surgical interns work the night shift over a couple of weeks. They ( and the reader) are dropped into the hospital night shift/ The interns don't always know what they are doing, one of them carries medical books in his pockets.They aren't especially likeable characters yet it's hard not to feel empathy towards them. They check on dying patients, insert lines and administer drugs never wholly confident by their actions. They try to avoid the stairwell where one of their classmates decided he couldn’t go on.They eat and sleep when they can and are exhausted ,bewildered and dealing with the medical hierarchy, treated poorly by the registrars and consultants they work under.

This is Austin Duffy's third novel. As well as writing Duffy is a practicing oncologist in a Dublin hospital. This is an excellently written book, reading like a memoir at times yet it is fiction. Anyone who has had the misfortune to walk through a normally chaotic hospital in the silence of night will be immediately returned to their experience when reading. It is unpleasant. Lots of the book is and yet is so deeply captivating. There are no chapters or natural breaks in the prose, the reader is immersed into the intern's experience. It is captured with such bleak reality and while yes it's fiction it captures the experience of I'd imagine so many interns and is a damning indictment of the system doctors train and work under and the hospital system itself. I was left with the feeling it's a career I would not want my children to pursue and reinforced my discomfort at the thoughts of ever having to spend time in an Irish hospital.

I felt the relief the interns in the book felt when morning arrived as I finished this book .A captivating immersive read, I really like this author's style of writing and will seek out his other books.

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Known that Duffy throws the reader directly into the chaos and mania of the night shift experienced by three interns- much as the interns themselves are thrown into the fire, The unnamed narrator, Stuart, and Lynda are competitive, as much with themselves as with each other. The hospital doesn't make their lives easier as nothing is the same from ward to ward and there are many small indignities. This doesn't let up. It also doesn't have any chapters but simply barrels through. In doing so, it creates an atmosphere that reminds the reader of what the characters are going through. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Interesting and cautionary tale.

I found this extremely enthralling, raw, and entirely unbearable in the best and worst kind of ways.
First of all I thought the lack of proper paragraphs and general separation of sentences, speech, and thoughts worked so well because it really threw you right into the deep, unnerving chaos and allowed you to feel this surreal reality they were trapped in. I also thought that the tension and exhaustion was written so vividly and powerfully, I felt exhausted for these characters and really grasped their deep, aching pain.
I also think that the characters were distinguishable enough from one another, despite knowing exactly why at times they suddenly lumped into one tired, sweating body of only eyes, hands, and brains. I thought it worked very well because at the amount of exhaustion and lack of fuel these doctors were going through all their thoughts and limbs would be the exact same and they wouldn’t have their distinctive, identifiable personalities anymore-only their patients, their hands, their brains that weren’t even working the way it should be.
I also thought the dark humour was wonderful, because for those very unlucky doctors and interns most turn to serious and dangerous addictions that not only hinder their personal lives but the lives of their students and colleagues. So a little dark humour to try and survive each night is at least a tiny but important fragility neurotic nerve connected to the reality outside this suffocating dystopian chaos each night.

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.

When I was in college, aspiring law school students were advised to read Scott Turow's "One L" to get a feel for what it was going to be like and decide if they could "hack it". In the same vein, aspiring med school students should read "The Night Interns" to gird themselves for the worst they will be facing in their future career. The unnamed narrator and two other surgical interns struggle through the night shift at a hospital, with skeletal supervision and little contact with the outside world. The reader is thrown right into this world, and I felt sickly the whole time, like I was living in this flourescent-lighted world of uncertainty and exhaustion.

This was a really immersive read, made especially so by the stylistic aporoach taken my the author. The narrative, delivered by the unnamed, ungendered, and generally unspecified narrator, unravels a tale in which potential major plot drama is hinted at but generally skirts by instead. The repetition, the overwhelming sense of tiredness, the constant underlying anxiety are all so heavily imbeded in the narration, and are stronger still by the lack if chapters. Time is both ever-present and unknowable, with the reader forced to choose to grab the brief breaks from reading as the interns do from their tasks, rather than at fixed points.

I found myself frequently on edge and exhausted reading it, worried for a pivotal crack or shock that didn't ever quite come to pass. Not for the narrator at least, the traumas of the patients passing by without major impact.

I'm not sure this will be for everyone, but as a haunting, sleep-deprived and immersive glimpse into the world of medical interns, it worked very well for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

A novel that reads like a memoir.A raw eye opening look at the night interns the nurses hospital that comes alive.The terror felt by them when confronted with a harrowing life threatening decision.Well written a book that stays with you.#netgalley #granatabooks