Adam Kay picks the best books about living with cancer
Source: www.theguardian.com Author: Adam Kay As Orson Welles so cheerily put it, we are born alone, we live alone and we die alone. But none of us has to struggle through cancer alone, thanks to a vast pool of literature, non-fiction and poetry that tackles the subject. In C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too, columnist and self-confessed hypochondriac John Diamond writes with almost unbearable honesty about his fears as he is diagnosed with throat cancer. As he puts it, this is his “attempt to write the book I was looking for the night I got the bad news”, and it explains “what it’s like to be a person with cancer, to deal with the pain and the fear and the anger”. While his feelings vacillate between hope and despair, his dark humour sings through. Taking the reader on a gripping and emotional journey, this account captures the unpalatable but essential truth that not all those living with cancer are “bravely battling” – some are just plain scared. Diamond is one of a handful of writers who can make me snort out loud in public through the magic of their words, and is much missed. The true story beautifully told by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is astonishing. Henrietta was a penniless black tobacco farmer who died in 1951, but whose cervical cells changed the shape of medicine. Taken without permission, cells from her tumour have since been multiplied and shared around the world to advance our [...]