Born sleeping

Told by a woman who watches a couple move through stillbirth as it happens, this book follows the close and often uneasy distance between an observer and the people she observes. It looks at how relationships can hold contradictory feelings at once, and at how hard it is to grasp what another person is living through. Along the way it turns to the strange pull of watching someone else's trauma from the outside, and to the cool, detached attention the writer brings to the scene.