Bodies - Jed Mercurio

Inside every hospital exists a world no outsider has been allowed to see, not even the young men and women who arrive there to begin careers in medicine. They think it's going to be like TV, and pretty soon they wish it was, because instead they're surrounded by death, disease and suffering and their only outlets are pitch-black humour and urgent, visceral sex.

Into this world plunges an idealistic young doctor. But as one harrowing ordeal follows another his relationship with patients and colleagues becomes increasingly cynical and he finds escape in a purely physical relationship with a student nurse. Then something happens that shocks him into seeking redemption, but he can gain it only by challenging the most powerful institutions of medicine.

Written by a former doctor, Bodies is a novel of almost unbearable power and intensity, an urgent despatch from the frontline of hospital life. It is also a moving portrait of the loss of innocence, the healing power of sexual love, and of a young man's quest for redemption in a world that long ago lost its sense of right or wrong.