Bookshelf: What Does It Feel Like by Sophie Kinsella

Sophie Kinsella was diagnosed with Glioblastoma in 2022. She wrote this book, featuring the fictional Eve Munroe, from snapshots of her experience being diagnosed with and then working through the treatment for her disease.

This book is unlike her other novels, and it rings painfully true. Eve is brave, but the outlook is bleak – and this time there can be no happy ending.

It took me many weeks to find the courage to open this book.

One of the things I really struggle with is not inflicting my grief and fear on my Partner. He has been dealing with all of this stoically. But I am a mess. Fortunately, he sleeps a lot and I do not so I have long mornings for all the crying, and generally manage to clean myself up before noon.

I was hoping this book would give me some insight into, well, into what it feels like to be on the other side of this nightmare. To be the one who is dying and not the one who will be left behind.

And it did do that. But… not quite in the way I was expecting.

The book (like our, and presumably Sophie’s, life now) is divided into Before and After. The protagonist, Eve, talks about the high points of her career as a novelist, the parties, the dresses, the quiet wonder at just how well things are turning out for her.

Then the After comes out of nowhere – just like the diagnosis does for most people.

Eve’s brain no longer obeys her. Neither do her legs. And her memory is shot to pieces.

What I both struggled with and loved about this book is that we orbit Eve’s head and her feelings throughout. She is struggling with short-term memory – the initial recovery from her surgery is told in glimpses and short bursts. The narration frames this for us. Eve’s husband explains to her, slowly, patiently, and repeatedly, what is happening. He supports her and cares for her even when she doesn’t fully understand why. But Eve’s numbness is present throughout. We never get beautiful flowery paragraphs of grief – because that’s now how Eve is living this one.

Somehow, despite how devastating the subject matter of the book is, the story itself manages to bring light into the situation. The reality of all this, four months into our journey, is that you can’t live in a state of dread and despair all of the time. You have to find a new normal.

One chapter covers the sheer amount of appointments Eve has to attend. The routine of checking in, identifying yourself, and then going to wait in the plastic chairs. Until Eve decides she’s here for the plastic chairs.

Another part I loved was the dismissal of the bucket list. Eve has lived a full life already – and I love how close she and her husband are when they’re discussing it all (Eve just wants fancy marmalade, and some nice fruit). I like that Sophie, as she did with the Shopaholic series, gives us permission to live our lives how we really want to, and not according to advice from other people. Eve craves the comfort of normality. And that’s a perfect goal.

I’ve read this book a few times now – it’s a short one – and different parts of it come to the fore the further down this journey we go. The initial confusion. The fear. The dullness of treatment. The funny moment that are inevitable despite how bleak the future looks.

It is devastating and funny and beautiful and so sad.

“You hate spoilers in books and films. We both do. But when it comes to this, all we want, above anything else, is a spoiler. We desperately want the doctors to give us the spoiler, but they can’t, because they don’t know either.”