After my foray into depressing post-apocalyptic water-world, I didn’t feel quite up to broaching a new nonfiction book about politics that my friend Marya told me it was essential that I read. I am dreading the takeover of the new regime, and the novella by Jenny Colgan wasn’t sufficient to lift my spirits. So I decided I would deliberately read something fun, and the author whose name popped into my head was Sophie Kinsella. I mean, Shopaholic, right? I pulled up her list of e-books on the library website, checked out the most recent—called What Does It Feel Like?—and sat down yesterday at breakfast to lose myself in fluff.

Okay, a successful writer, a lovely husband who takes care of the five kids while she’s writing, a book optioned for a movie, a walk on the red carpet, so far so good. And then…a stage four glioblastoma in her brain lands her in the hospital, where she has surgery, loses her short-term memory and most of her mobility, and has to start from scratch to relearn how to be a functional human while receiving chemotherapy and radiation, because of course it was malignant. C’mon!

Turns out it’s an autobiographical novelization of Kinsella’s recent experience. Oh, no! But she has apparently survived to write a book about it, so I finished it, even though I didn’t want to. (It’s only 144 pages, another novella.) If this is something you are experiencing, however, it’s a good read to get you through, cheer you up, and give you hope plus some wry jokes about bucket lists.

Next time, I will definitely read the blurb first.