I was inspired to read this short memoir, published last April, after seeing a positive review in The TLS. It is a short account, mostly extracted from Freddy’s journal, of his experience as the 21-year-old son of a man diagnosed with, and ultimately dying from, glioblastoma.

While Freddy’s experience is singular and recounted with both wit and tenderness, I found that it didn’t really resonate with me. It struck me that Freddy seemed a very “young” 21-year-old, and it made me reflect on our very different paths in life. At the same age as he was struggling to deal with awful news, I was being trained to deliver it. Death was unfamiliar to him at 21, while I’d spent years with cadavers. Some of the conversations that struck Freddy as beautifully expressed struck me as medical cliché.

There was just, somehow, too much medicine in here for me to really separate off that part of my brain and allow myself to feel the humanity. I think that’s more my failing than Freddy’s.