When my younger daughter was three months old, I woke up one morning to notice my sight in my right eye had become blurry. If I shut my left eye and relied on the right one, I couldn’t see where the curtains began or ended, couldn’t tell what that fuzzy white thing on the mantelpiece … More The body doesn’t lie
Summer 2015, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh “No, it’s not cancer.” My body begins to relax at the young and energetic doctor’s words. Not cancer. The sight loss, paralysis, memory gaps . . . It’s not what I most feared. My husband is sitting next to me in another grotty plastic visitors’ chair. He shoots me … More Learning I’ve got MS
Half a dozen astronauts circle the planet earth from outer space in this odd, rhapsodic novel about a gravity-free voyage in which the travellers see everything – food, water, cutlery, sleep, sex, toilet arrangements, themselves – from a different angle. In many ways, it’s a story about our planet as seen by outsiders. And, also, … More Orbital – Samantha Harvey
The Only Story, Julian Barnes, Vintage It’s the sixties and Paul is back home in Surrey on holiday from university when he meets and starts sleeping with the much older Susan, whose mastery of the tennis court attracts him almost as much as her wit and lithe figure clad in whites. Ironic, damaged and knowing, … More Telling everyone’s story
One of the worst things about long-term illness can be feeling you’re on your own, despite all attempts by well-meaning friends and family to persuade you otherwise. Hilary Mantel understands the isolation only too well, as she shows in Giving up the Ghost. Bodily failure Zoom and social media are, of course, helping; they connect … More Giving up the Ghost
It took Adam Ross more than ten years to write the novel Playworld and little wonder; the 500pp title is a tour de force, offering acute, compassionate and unparalleled insight into the pain so often involved in coming of age. Although the novel is set in 1980s Manhattan, the story has a universality that will … More Playworld – Adam Ross
While the prose underpinning Gabriel’s Moon has (partly) won me over, I am afraid to report I was not thrilled by the book itself. Don’t get me wrong, Boyd has skill, writing so beautifully that even a description of the rain sparkles in his hands: ‘At Peebles the river was clear, fast and shallow, the … More Gabriel’s Moon
There were times I was uncomfortably aware of the deeper meaning of Cloud Cuckoo Land eluding me as I was reading it, but I eventually managed to work out what was happening. Roughly, anyway. And ironically, last week we ended up having one of our most successful book club discussions in many months about the title, a story that circles around different stories, all of them eulogies to the book. … More Away with the fairies?
I’m almost ashamed to confess it, but I’d never read Heartburn by Nora Ephron until this month. Despite loving her movies over the last forty or so years. But after our local book group chose the title for this month’s discussion, I sat down and raced through the chatty yet heartbreaking pages. Now I wish … More Heartburn
Helen Fowler Writer 