The chilling, ghostly account of a doctor who is determined to find light in a lifeless body.

Patient DL lies motionless in a small room at the end of a hospital corridor. She has suffered massive damage to her brain, and it's not clear whether she can see or hear the world around her.

When Sarah Newman, the narrator of this ghostly tale, is charged with finding a spark of light in her lifeless body, she is drawn into a drama which extends far beyond the hospital walls. What accident befell DL to cause her such massive brain damage? Why does her family behave in such unsettling and perplexing ways? Why is DL's estranged husband visiting the patient after hours, in the dead of night? And what is troubling the narrator herself, who seems to carry a burden from her past?

As the tension builds and the strange case of Patient DL becomes known to the outside world, Sarah Newman finds herself at the heart of a personal and an ethical dilemma. `The Quick' is the thrilling account of an obsession, charged throughout with a sense of the mystery of consciousness.

Laura Spinney was born in Yorkshire in 1971 and graduated from Durham University with a degree in Natural Sciences. She has written for the New Scientist, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Her first novel `The Doctor' was published by Methuen in 2001. She lives in Paris and London.