Milkshakes and Morphine

'Extraordinary' Rachel Cusk
'Exquisite and tender' Sarah Perry
'Unexpectedly joyous' Julie Myerson

This is a singular memoir: an excavation of mother love, a candid account of the agonies, and absurdities, of the cancer experience, and a doggedly optimistic paean to life.

When Genevieve Fox finds a lump in her throat, she turns up for the hospital diagnosis in a party frock and fancy hair. I can’t have cancer, she thinks. I’ve done my hair. But there is another reason she can’t countenance cancer. Genevieve was orphaned to it at the age of nine.

Genevieve’s story weaves together past and present as she recalls her rackety, unconventional childhood, while also facing the spectre of being lost to her young boys. Yet, she confronts her treatment with the same sassy survival instinct that characterised her childhood misadventures. Through an extraordinary alchemy, Genevieve takes life’s precariousness and turns it on its head.