Jun 16

Jun 16 A really good read - This Is Not A Pity Memoir

If you’ve watched The Split or The Hour, or seen The Iron Lady, Suffragette or Shame, you’ll already know what an extraordinarily good screen writer Abi Morgan is. In this searingly memorable book she has used her remarkable writing talents to record the story of what happened - to him, to her, and to their two children - when her partner, Jacob, collapsed from an initially bewilderingly un-diagnosable, catastrophic brain inflammation.

On what starts as an ordinary day, Jacob, who suffers from MS, says he’s not feeling great and Abi grumpily enquires whether he’s taken any paracetamol, grudgingly offering to get some steroids from his consultant later on, when she’s collected the sushi they’ve ordered to celebrate their son finishing his GCSEs that day. “You’re a terrible nurse” he jokingly tells her.

She will return home to find the man she has loved for 20 years, the rock, caretaker, joy-chaser and chief adventurer of their family, collapsed on the floor of their bathroom, his lips blue, his mouth caked with dried blood. He is breathing and conscious, but only just.

And nothing will be the same again.

He will be rushed to hospital where, as his condition deteriorates, consultants will be bewildered by scans repeatedly showing nothing untoward. His body will start shutting down and he will be put into an induced coma, which he will remain in for seven months, careering to the edge of death on umpteen occasions.

His specialists, prompted by Abi’s hours of Googling, will realise that Jacob is suffering from an extremely rare reaction to the withdrawal of an MS drug he was being given. And although it takes so many agonising, exhausting months, he will slowly be brought back to life and consciousness.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Because the Jacob who has returned to them will forever be a changed man. And the new Jacob, the Jacob who has to painstakingly re-learn how to walk, talk, function on a daily basis (some of which he will never again be able to do entirely unaided), won’t recognise Abi, or believe that she is his partner.

Then, in the midst of his long long rehab, Abi feels something isn’t right with her own body, and she is diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer which requires a mastectomy and chemotherapy.

And yet, none of that is the end - or, indeed, the core - of the story either.

Because as the cleverly designed book jacket, with its dusty pink outer sleeve, and bright yellow cover, declares, This Is Not A Pity Memoir, is, at its fiercely beating, resolutely devoted, steadfastly unsentimental heart, a love story.

It’s the story of finding your person, then re-finding and redefining your relationship with them when everything changes.

It’s the story of the anger, fear, guilt, loneliness and bone-deep exhaustion of being the carer, the parent, the person left abandoned.

It is a brutally honest, at times savagely funny, deeply affectionate, wincingly relatable story about life, with all its vicissitudes, the dogged power of love, the indispensable importance of family, and the miraculous friendships that scoop you up and hold you up when things go wrong.

This Is Not A Pity Memoir is a book everyone should read.

I’ll leave the last - typically perfectly written - words to Abi

“…for the most part you have to swim across the direction of a current when you are far out of your depth. Let it at times take you, pull you, threaten to drown you. Hope that you get the break of a wave, or the feel of sand under your feet. And then, if you can, on your knees, on all fours if you have to, you do everything in your power, everything with the little breath you have left to claw your way back, pull yourself up, until you are lying gasping for air on your back, with, you hope, the sun on your face.”