It starts with a small, physical fact. A dryness at the back of the throat. A joint that clicks. A sound from inside a wall.

This is not a book about being sick. It is a book about being here. In this chair. With a body that keeps its own time, measured in flare-ups and bad days, not calendars. It is a record of the small negotiations—the journey to the kitchen, the weight of a glass, the texture of paper, the memory of a voice.

There are no lessons here. No clean arcs or moments of clarity. There is only the hum of the refrigerator, the voice from a podcast about geology, and the insistent presence of a world that continues on outside the window. An unflinching and fragmented collection of essays, An Echo in the Plaster is an intimate, real-time account of a body that has become a stranger, and the thoughts that fill the silence.

Kieron Bailey

Books