Go to sleep - Helen Walsh

As she drinks in the view in front of her, Rachel Massey stands on the cusp of the biggest journey of her life. For Rachel is about to become a mother. Mere hours from now, her first baby will be here and she can't wait to meet it. Terrified and excited, there is nothing she wants more, yet she senses things will never be the same again.

This is the story of Rachel's voyage into motherhood. Full of the same hopes and dreams as any parent-to-be, she soon realises that nothing about this new world is as she imagined. As the raw shock of sleep deprivation takes its toll on her and the truth begins to blur with the unreal, Rachel becomes consumed by one sole desire - to sleep. But how far will she go to get her baby to sleep?

Devastatingly honest and shockingly painful at times, Go To Sleep is a heart-wrenching story about one woman and her newborn child. It strips motherhood bare in the most unforgettable of ways.

Helen Walsh was born in Warrington, England, in 1976. Go To Sleep is her third novel. Her first, Brass, was published in 2004 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Prize. Her second novel, Once Upon a Time in England, was the winner of a Somerset Maugham Prize. She now lives in Liverpool.

Compelling, unflinching and significant...invested with humour and colour
The List

A brave and uncompromising novel that absolutely needed to be written
dovegreyreader

Whether conjuring up the sights, smells and sounds of Liverpool's Carnival, or recreating the terrifying agony of sleeplessness Walsh is wonderfully in control of her world. Rachel's frenzied fatigue seeps off the novel's pages, inexorably carrying you along on her sleep-deprived journey. And you want to go along: Walsh is so terrific at making Rachel's universe immediate and vivid that you stay, immersed and riveted, as Rachel's world goes topsy-turvy. One of the more unusual, urgent young voices writing in Britain today, and very much of today's Britain, Walsh boldly confronts contemporary life, and her latest novel is a combustible combination of raw emotion and deep compassion
Independent on Sunday

A more mature, but still hard hitting book.. powerfully told.
Big Issue - Doug Johnstone

A combustible combination of raw emotion and deep compassion.
Independent on Sunday - Daneet Steffens

There will be lots here that is depressingly familiar to new parents. Walsh is particularly strong on that strung out narcotic hungover feeling of what life is like with too little sleep.
Bookmunch

Given that it's about postnatal depression and psychosis we're not saying it's a happy book, but Walsh has a real way with words, so deep breaths...
Herald