Writer and poet David Toms is used to living with uncertainty: as one of Ireland’s ‘Heart Children’, he was born in 1988 with a rare congenital condition and has been living with the restraints and risks of that condition ever since. In Pacemaker, using a skillful combination of poetry, creative non-fiction and diary entries, he describes the condition and its effects on him, and examines the coping mechanisms that have helped him to find a way through life: writing and walking. “Every time I write about my heart, I write about walking. Every time I write about walking, I write about my heart…”

Toms is warm, wise company as we follow him on his daily walks, along with his dog, Madra, but the journey of the book is treacherous, taking in two major health scares. The first results in the eponymous pacemaker being fitted, and the second, COVID-19, leads to hospital admission and a fraught period of worry for his partner and family, his body threatening to shut down while the world did the same. Thankfully, he survived, and produced Pacemaker: a moving, ultimately hopeful book about finding ways to keep putting one foot in front of the other.