Elephant

One in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime, yet it so often remains the elephant in the room. In this unprecedented book, talented novelist, Gillian Shirreffs, collects and curates her own emails, WhatsApp messages, tweets, short stories, photographs and other found texts to tell the story of 800 days. 800 days in which she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, had 22 infusions of chemotherapy, two surgeries, 15 sessions of radiotherapy, learned to live with the aftermath of treatment, and saw her debut novel, Brodie, published. None of what is contained within Elephant was written with a book in mind and that is its power. Unvarnished yet beautiful, Elephant is a book that doesn't realise it is a book, providing a unique insight into a writer's life disrupted by illness. It offers a gamut of emotions; you will laugh, cry, think. Shirreffs' technique for surviving the most difficult days was to get through them five minutes at a time; this powerful testament to life, friendship and kindness, is one to be read at your own pace. A coffee table cancer book.