Description
Book SynopsisHonest, heartrending and full of humour, this is an extraordinary memoir about an unconventional childhood and the absurdities of the cancer experience. It is also, most importantly, a celebration of life.
When Genevieve Fox finds a lump in her throat, she turns up for the hospital diagnosis in a party frock. I can’t have cancer, she thinks. I’ve done my hair. But there is another reason she can’t countenance cancer. She was orphaned by it at the age of nine.
Fox’s story weaves together past and present as she recalls her rackety, unconventional childhood, while also facing the spectre of being lost to her young boys. Yet she confronts her treatment with the same sassy survival instinct that characterised her childhood misadventures. She takes life’s precariousness and turns it on its head.
‘Life-enhancing… Original and wonderful’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Exquisite and tender’
SARAH PERRY
Trade ReviewGenerous, engaging and laugh-out-loud funny, Fox's memoir is a reminder that the willingness to share experience, good, bad, and sometimes bloody terrifying, is one of the best parts of what makes us human -- Julie Myerson
Part journal, part pitch-black comedy, this
extraordinary account of childhood abandonment and life-threatening illness is also a painfully intelligent meditation on vulnerability * Rachel Cusk *
An unexpectedly optimistic and at times funny story of hope, warmth, and the vitality of love. -- Helena Lee * Harper's Bazaar *
Fox is a brilliant storyteller and a beautiful writer. -- Anna van Praaghe * Evening Standard *
Delightful and moving… Fox’s writing brims with joie de vivre. -- Alice O'Keefe * Spectator *
Candid and optimistic. -- Fanny Blake * Woman & Home *
A cordial, confiding narrator. -- Sarah Crown * Guardian *
Remarkably readable wit and flair. -- Helen Brown * Daily Telegraph *
An original and wonderful book. -- Allison Pearson * The Sunday Telegraph *
A witty, life-affirming book. -- Valerie Grove * The Oldie *
This spirited memoir of her journey into remission weaves together stories of her unconventional, orphan childhood with poignant reflections on motherhood, art, and literature. -- Lorna Bradbury * World of Cruising *
Genevieve Fox writes about cancer without cliché. Hers is a feat of endurance, not a journey. -- Harriet Baker * The Times Literary Supplement *
