What Does It Feel Like?

Eve Monroe is a bestselling novelist and mother of five, married to her college sweetheart, Nick. Told through vignettes, letters, text messages, and monologues, the novel traces Eve's life from the peak of her literary career through her diagnosis and treatment of incurable brain cancer.

The story opens with Eve completing a phone interview for Modern Woman magazine. She publicly praises her work-in-progress, a country-house saga, but privately finds the writing turgid and pointless. She offers her standard advice to aspiring writers: write the book you would want to read, write the truth, and write what you know. Unable to face her manuscript, Eve wanders to a Wimbledon Village boutique, captivated by a silvery sequined dress. Her own advice echoes back to her, and a new idea seizes her: a contemporary comedy about a woman staring at her credit card bill. She begins typing the opening chapter of Hey Big Spender on her phone, abandons the old manuscript, and buys the dress, convinced the right occasion will come.

The book becomes a major success. Disney options the film rights, and Eve participates in a magazine feature about her marriage, describing how she met Nick on her first night at Oxford and fell in love after hearing him sing. Asked whether he would be there if things got tough, she answers with certainty. Eve's success peaks at the movie premiere of Hey Big Spender in Leicester Square. Wearing her lucky dress and loaned diamond jewelry, she walks the red carpet with her five children. A television presenter asks how it feels to "have it all." Eve thinks what she feels most is extraordinarily lucky, and jokes that she is waiting for her luck to run out.

The narrative shifts abruptly to a section titled "After." Eve wakes in a hospital bed, her head encased in bandage, with no memory of why she is there. She cannot recall the day, the year, or the prime minister's name. Nick explains she had surgery to remove a large brain tumor in an eight-hour operation, and the growth has been sent for analysis. Alone, she stares at the ceiling and tries to will the word "benign" into truth.

Recovery is grueling. Physiotherapist Yuliya guides Eve through exercises with a Zimmer frame, a wheeled walking aid. Her legs feel like lead, her head spins, and her memory is fractured: She remembers she has five children but cannot recall their hospital visits. Nick compares her recovery to writing a book, getting there chapter by chapter. Determined not to cry, Eve grips the frame and pushes forward. Her family rallies around her. Her mother, Marjorie, looks after the children. Her sister Imogen offers to host the younger ones, while her sister Ginnie shares brain tumor research and Ginnie's children make get-well cards. Nick sleeps on a single mattress squeezed into Eve's room, and their 10-year-old daughter, Isobel, sends a brief email asking when her mother is coming home.

On walks outside the hospital, Eve's memory loss follows a devastating pattern. She does not remember previous outings, is startled to learn it is December, and struggles to recall words to Christmas carols. Each time, she eventually asks Nick, "What's wrong with me?" The narration shifts briefly to his perspective, revealing the truth he must deliver again and again: Eve has incurable cancer, she keeps forgetting, and he must keep breaking the news. He calls these the hardest moments of his life, delaying each time to savor a few more minutes of her happiness.

When Eve is more alert, Nick tells her the growth has been confirmed as a grade four glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain tumor. Eve's optimism surfaces briefly: People have cancer; there are cures. But left alone, she searches the diagnosis on her iPad and reads devastating results: incurable, terminal, with a median survival of 14 months. Tears run down her face. She texts Nick: "I googled glioblastoma." His reply comes instantly: "Oh, my beautiful Eve. I'm coming."

Cognitive therapy reveals the extent of her impairment. Eve cannot recall the word "shirt," her handwriting resembles a toddler's, and she fails to assemble a simple triangle from plastic blocks. She returns home but needs a carer, Helen, though she insists otherwise. Helen mentions that her previous glioblastoma patient died one year after diagnosis. Eve goes quiet, notes she is two months post-diagnosis, and insists she is fine.

Eve and Nick plan how to tell their younger children. During a family Scrabble game at half-term, they deliver a speech scripted over weeks: Mummy's illness is a form of cancer. The three older brothers already knew; the disclosure is aimed at her son Reggie and Isobel. Her son Arthur, 15, asks if a cure might be found; Eve answers honestly that none exists yet. Isobel sobs that it is not fair. Eve reframes her situation: She has been lucky in many ways, and this is where she has had bad luck, but she can still walk, talk, and play Scrabble. The mood lifts when Isobel insists "yit" is a word meaning a type of boat: "He sailed there in his yit." The family collapses in laughter.

The narrative captures the rhythms of treatment through montage: endless waiting rooms, blood tests, radiotherapy, MRI scans. Eve's internal monologue reveals crushing fatigue and cycles of grief, but aloud she says only that things could be worse. A series of early-morning conversations between Eve and Nick explores their fears with dark humor. Eve insists Nick must be present when she dies so she can hear his voice. They adopt the concept of "Schrödinger's funeral": simultaneously preparing for death while believing it will not happen for years. When Nick reads aloud bucket-list suggestions, Eve rejects grand adventures and proposes "Normal plus": their regular life, slightly elevated. Her actual bucket list amounts to finding a really good marmalade. Eve identifies the central irony of her life: She is the queen of happy endings in fiction but cannot write one for herself. Nick notes that they both hate spoilers, yet a spoiler is the one thing they desperately want. Every scan is a plot twist, and there are no teasers.

Eve reaches her one-year anniversary post-surgery, then passes the 14-month median survival mark. She has had four consecutive stable scans, finished chemotherapy, regained energy, and begun writing again. Nick books the family on a charity walk for The Brain Tumour Charity in London. Wearing bright red T-shirts, they join crowds of families affected by brain tumors. As Eve strides through Hyde Park, she tells Nick she is "walking the red carpet again" and declares she feels normal. A wave of optimism overtakes her: She will see the children grow up, write more books, beat the odds. A walk marshal shouts encouragement, and Eve shouts back, "I'll keep going!" This becomes her sole aim and the only happy ending she wants: simply to keep going.