Anthony Clare
Proving that Life Isn’t Fair
My Year Off: Rediscovering Life after a Stroke
By Robert McCrum
Picador 250pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
One of the fastest-growing literary trends is what might be termed ‘pathobiography’, the sufferers’ own detailed and highly personal description of some disease, accident or affiiction that they have sustained and which more often than not has changed their lives. In recent years we have had best-selling accounts of breast cancer (Ruth Picardie), manic depression (Kay Jamieson), throat cancer (John Diamond), postnatal depression (Fiona Shaw), brain haemorrhage and paralysis (Jean-Dominique Bauby) and Aids (Harold Brodkey). There is a fairly familiar pattern: illness striking an otherwise healthy and reasonably successful individual; his/her responses of bewilderment, anger, denial; a considerable reluctance/inability/disinclination on the part of the doctors to communicate; a period of despair followed by a remorseless coming to terms with the nitty-gritty of the particular disorder; the presence of a loving, constant and enduring partner; and, even in the case of a fatal disease, a triumphant assertion of the human spirit and the defeat of disease and death itself.
Robert McCrum’s account of the massive stroke he suffered at the age of forty-two is a particularly fine addition to the field. A highly successful journalist and fiction writer, he was newly married and ignorant not merely of the realities of a stroke but also of the savage mauling that
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation