“The Language of Kindness” hasn’t even hit shelves yet and it’s already being adapted for the screen. Christie Watson’s memoir about nurses, compassion, caring, and healing is receiving the television treatment from Mammoth Screen (“Victoria”). Deadline broke the story.
From publisher Chatto & Windus, the book is set for release May 3 in the UK and May 8 in the States. It is Watson’s account of the incredible warmth and empathy found in the nursing profession. The author herself worked as a nurse for 20 years at several hospitals. “The Language of Kindness” “tells stories including the nursing of a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, a patient’s agonizing heart-lung transplant, and the hair-washing of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive,” the source notes.
Rachel Bennette will pen the series. She’s the screenwriter behind the BBC Two adaptation of the Zadie Smith novel “NW” and the Robert Pattinson-starrer “Bel Ami.” Bennette has also written episodes of “Ripper Street” and “Inspector Lewis.”
“The Language of Kindness” is Watson’s third book and first foray into non-fiction. She previously wrote the novels “Tiny Sunbirds Far Away” and “Where Women Are Kings.”
“I think that nursing has allowed me [to convey emotion in my writing]. I think my time working in children’s intensive care, which I don’t do anymore, but all those years that I spent as a nurse, from the age of 17, just allowed me an insight into human emotion at those times of life when it’s so important,” Watson has said of her past profession. “And to see and witness those times of grief and love and loss and all those things was such a huge privilege, both in my own personal life, but it also, I think, spills over into my writing.”