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What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella

Contemporary fiction

What Does It Feel Like?

by Sophie Kinsella

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Quick take

A successful novelist must grapple with massive memory loss post-surgery in this affecting autobiographical novella.

Melancholy

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, Heavy_Read

    Heavy read

  • Illustrated icon, Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Under200

    Under 200 pages

Synopsis

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.

As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.

Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.

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What Does It Feel Like?

How to Write a Book

“And now,” says the nice interviewer from Modern Woman magazine, “how does it feel to be writing your seventh book?”

“It feels terrific,” lies Eve. “I’m really thrilled to be working on it and I can’t wait to share it with all my readers.”

It’s a nightmare. The words have jammed up for weeks and I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything feels turgid; everything feels pointless. Why did I want to be an author again?

“Can you tell us anything about it?” probes the interviewer.

“Yes, it’s a long family saga about a family called the Wilsons, set between the wars in a large country house.”

“It sounds wonderful!”

“Well, thank you,” says Eve, feeling unconvinced.

“We can’t wait to read it! And now, I know our readers will want to ask: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?”

“Yes,” says Eve, who has answered this question about twenty-five thousand times and has therefore honed her thoughts. “I do, actually. My advice is to write the book you would like to read yourself. Visualize going into a bookshop and finding the perfect book. The book you would buy immediately. What does it look like? What’s it about? What genre is it? Then write that book. And above all, write the truth. Write what you know and do it convincingly. I don’t mean write nonfiction,” she clarifies. “I mean write the truth about life, whatever genre you’re in.”

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Why I love it

What Does It Feel Like? Early on in this warm and deeply personal story, Eve, a successful author and mother, wakes in a hospital surrounded by tubes and wires and nurses. She can’t recall how she got there; neither can she name the sitting prime minister. And so begins Eve’s journey with grade four glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that will upend life as she knows it.

The challenges facing Eve are manifold. She must relearn how to walk. She discovers a distressing new incapacity to remember anyone’s name. Her husband and a team must help her with everything from remembering Christmas carol lyrics to making meals for her kids. But amidst these trials, Eve uncovers reserves of strength she never thought she had. And in doing so she just might learn what truly matters in this fleeting life we have.

How does one reckon with a sickness that’s generally terminal? How do we talk about death with our children? How do we talk about death with ourselves? These are a few of the mighty questions this slim, reflective volume—based on the author’s own experience with the same disease—seeks to tackle. In another writer’s hands, such a book might feel heavy, upsetting, intolerably sad. But Kinsella’s gentle wit and glimmers of wisdom transform this story into a work of valiant and uplifting beauty.

Member ratings (111)

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New and recent add-ons
View all
Intermezzo
The Stone Witch of Florence
What Does It Feel Like?
The Last One at the Wedding
The Book of George
We Solve Murders
The Bog Wife
Here One Moment
The Night We Lost Him
The Crimson Crown
Someone in the Attic
Middle of the Night
A Sorceress Comes to Call
Four Weekends and a Funeral
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love
The Seventh Veil of Salome
Leather & Lark
Hum
The Life Impossible
Vilest Things
The Love of My Afterlife
Home Cooking