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Sophie Kinsella, author of What Does It Feel Like?

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband 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.

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What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella

October 2024

I have read so many of Sophie Kinsella’s books through the years. They have made me laugh --- and then laugh some more. She had a keen eye on twentysomething women with her character, Rebecca “Becky” Bloomwood.

So what happens when you are an author who has been through a health crisis, and you want to write a book about it? Nonfiction? No, that would be way too dull. It would be full of facts and things that you really do not remember, and honestly interviewing people would not be much fun. Instead you turn to what you know best, which is what Sophie does in her latest novel, WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? In it, renowned novelist Eve Monroe is facing a devastating diagnosis, and she is learning to live and love anew. Sophie was diagnosed two years ago with glioblastoma, a form of aggressive brain cancer, which at this time has no cure.

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