I loved this gorgeous book, and read it in almost one sitting. Honest, relatable, funny and very touching. The author deals with the inevitable tragedy of a parent dying and coming to terms with your own mortality beautifully. Would recommend.

I loved 'This Really Isn't About You'.' It reminded me of many other memoirs I've read about the difficulties of living with a female body - a topic that very much interests me - and I'd recommend it to people who've enjoyed books such as Ariel Levy's 'The Rules Do Not Apply,' Emilie Pine's 'Notes to Self' and Jami Attenberg's 'All Grown Up'.

A very readable and enjoyable memoir. The writing is very good, warm, witty and engaging. The sections about the author's father and his death were particularly touching - sadly I related to the situation on a personal level and could fully empathise with Jean's feelings and thoughts. Other sections, such as the author's romantic/sexual relationships and her experiences living in various cities in Europe, were interesting but not fascinating though the quality of the telling made them equally as engrossing. I also loved the implied hope and resilience in the closing line. Closing lines are so important to my enjoyment of a book yet so many are weak. The author totally nailed this one and made it look easy. A very good read.

This is a beautifully written memoir. Jean Hannah Edelstein goes deep into her own life to write honestly about families, fathers, single life around the world and medical quandaries. Reading this book felt like spending time with a friend; so much so that after I finished I looked her up online to see what she’s doing now. (Spoiler alert: She’s married with a brand new baby. Congratulations!) Recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and Picador for a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book moved me to tears - I am in awe of how the author skilfully managed to share a story that is at times vulnerable and sad whilst also holding so many moments of humour and hope.  'This Really Isn't About You' is Jean Hannah Edelstein's personal journey of losing her beloved Father to cancer, and also finding out she had inherited the same gene that also meant that she too would be predisposed to certain cancers.  She manages to capture so many of the moments we all go through as adults when considering life, relationships, dating, and wondering if we're making the right choices as we stumble through life, trying our best.

This was the book I wanted Places I Stopped on the Way Home to be: a wry, bittersweet look at the unpredictability of life as an idealistic young woman in the world’s major cities. Edelstein’s memoir also fits into several of my favorite subgenres: it’s a family memoir, a medical memoir and a bereavement memoir all at once. The story opens in Brooklyn in February 2014 as Edelstein, age 32, is trying to build an adult life back in America after 14 years in London and Berlin. Two years earlier her father had told her via Skype from Baltimore that he had lung cancer, and she returned to the States to be closer to help. But when the moment came, she was still unprepared: “if someone had said to me: What would you like to be doing when your father dies? I would not have said, I would like to be looking for love on OKCupid. But I did not have the luxury to make that decision. Who does?”

Her father never smoked yet died of lung cancer; his mother had colon cancer and died at 42. Both had Lynch syndrome, a genetic disease that predisposes people to various cancers. Six months after her father’s death, Edelstein took a genetic test, as he had wanted her to, and learned that she was positive for the Lynch syndrome mutation. The book’s structure (“Between” – “Before” – “After”) plunges readers right into the middle of the family mess, then pulls back to survey her earlier life, everything from childhood holidays in her mother’s native Scotland to being a secretary to a London literary agent who hated her, before returning to the turning point of that diagnosis. How is she going to live with this knowledge hanging over her? Doctors want her to have a prophylactic hysterectomy, but how can she rule out children when she doesn’t yet have a partner in her life?

So many aspects of this book resonated for me, especially moving between countries and having a genetic disease in the family. Beyond those major themes, there were tiny moments that felt uncannily familiar to me, like when she’s helping her mother prepare for an online auction of the contents of the family home in Maryland, or comparing the average cleanliness and comfort of rental properties in England and the States. There are so many little memorable scenes in this memoir: having an allergic reaction to shellfish two days after her arrival in the States, getting locked out of her sublet and having to call an Uzbek/Israeli locksmith at 3 a.m., and subsisting on oatmeal three times a day in London versus going on all-expenses-paid trips to Estonia and Mauritius for a conference travel magazine.

This is a clear-eyed look at life in all its irony (such as the fact that she’s claustrophobic and dreads getting MRI tests when it was her own father, a nuclear physicist, who built the world’s first full-body MRI scanner at Aberdeen) and disappointment. I’m prizing this as a prime example of life writing that’s not comprehensive or strictly chronological yet gives a clear sense of the self in the context of a family and in the face of an uncertain future.

This is number 15, the book ‘that is non fiction’: “This Really Isn’t About You”, by Jean Hannah Edelstein. I am grateful to have received a review copy of this book through Netgalley.

It’s a first person autobiographical account of a young woman’s life, from her early years to current with her father in the centre, holding hands with the spectre of cancer. It’s not as gloomy as it sounds, but Edelstein tells her story through the filter of living with a set of genes which holds a predilection for cancer diagnoses, usually young and an unusual presentation.

She examines lots of different aspects of her life in an interesting, almost passionless way, and I think that makes it more powerful as it doesn’t feel like you’re being manipulated into feelings. Her relationship with her parents, her siblings, her boyfriends. The places she lives and that battle between what she wants to do and what she thinks she should do, as a dutiful daughter. Time spent in Berlin is described as both lonely and fulfilling, and she is warned that she will be a target as her looks and name are so ‘Jewish’ – a novelty in Germany.

I enjoyed the book and her story, especially as there are as many things I can relate to as those I can’t. Jean is female and probably about the same age as me, she does not live in the same area as her parents and therefore struggles with feelings of guilt about not being close enough to help. On the other hand, I have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with a cancer diagnosis, or persecution due to religion, and that made it interesting.

A witty and profoundly beautiful memoir about family, love, mortality and letting go.

This tender memoir tells the story of the author returning home to say goodbye to her father who is dying from cancer. It is an exploration of family relationships and growing up. It stayed with me long after I closed the book.

I’m not normally one for memoirs, but this had me hooked from the get go. The author lays bare her soul, detailing the death of her father and how she came to terms with it and having to be adult- with all its complexities and realities.

A really engaging and powerful reflection of a serious topic. Edelstein has you hooked from page one and her honesty and sense of reality will keep you turning the pages from beginning to end. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I’m not sure when I first came across Jean Hannah Edelstein’s writing, although I suspect it was thanks to Twitter. What I do remember is reading as much of Edelstein’s work as I could and immediately signing up to her newsletter Thread.

It’s 2014 and Jean Hannah Edelstein has moved back to the US, after years spent abroad, because her father has terminal cancer. Shortly after her return, he dies. In the midst of her grief, Edelstein is faced with the possibility that she may have inherited a gene that makes her more susceptible to cancer and the decision of whether or not to find out for sure.

This Really Isn’t About You is a tender and poignant memoir about family, dating and grief. Go read it and then enjoy catching up with Edelstein’s Guardian column.

I loved this, didn't know what it would be about really but ended up thoroughly enjoying it. Edelstein writes like a dream.

Really loved this. Clean, moving, funny prose, well put together. Elegant and unflinching in equal measures.

Imagine having lost a beloved parent to cancer....and then finding out that you had inherited the gene that might give you cancer too.

Loss is a great distiller for all of us, and helps us realise what's most important in life. For Jean Hannah Edelstein, she also has to wrestle with own mortality as well as the rough ocean that is grief. And so she begins an interesting journey, one that many of us can relate to and recognise ourselves in - particularly if you've lived in London during your twenties, I found those sections very moving and relatable! - but one that entails having to face the bigger questions in life much sooner than most of us normally would. Does knowing your fate make living easier...or harder? How do you face the future? We live in a world that suggests to us that we are in control of our lives and our fate....Jean's experiences show us that that really isn't the case at all.

"This Isn't Really About You" is a very special memoir that manages to be courageous and heartbreaking but lighthearted at the same time. Edelstein writes frankly but also with great humour and grace.

I would like to thank both NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for giving me the opportunity to read ‘This Really Isn’t About You’ in exchange for my honest unbiased review.

I had never heard of Jean Edelstein before- This memoir was written in such a beautiful way that I instantly became hooked in it. It is heartbreaking. raw but still made me smile.
This book gives you moments of happiness combined with sadness. It makes you think on your own life and also no matter how much you think your in control of your life your actually not.

Loved this. Downloaded on a whim and a few chapters later never wanted it to end.
I remember a time when autobiographies and memoirs were celebrity driven and it was more about the headline grabbing stories than the writing.
It’s been a joy of late to read stories written by writers, of ordinary lives, of families and relationships and health issues and , well, just everyday life.

This is a smart sassy writer. Both funny and heartbreaking. Her relationship with her father in dealing with his cancer diagnosis to his death and beyond is really touching, as is the impact it has on the relationship with her mother. Tears welled as I read about drinking tea as a way to pass time, to start a conversation, it being not about the drink or the taste but a comfort and a ritual.

A really special read that introduced me to a writer I didn’t know before but will wait eagerly for more in the future.

Thank you for the advance copy to 'This Really Isn't About You'.

I wasn't sure about the style of writing at first but soon got hooked! I really felt for the author who was looking for love, finding her place in the world all while coping with the death of her father. I enjoyed reading about her life and the journey she took to get to where she is now. It is a poignant, humorous memoir and I will look out for more of Jean Hannah Edelstien's work.

I’d been subscribed to Jean Hannah Edelstein’s beautifully written newsletter for about a year when I saw her soon-to-be-released memoir available for request on NetGalley, and I jumped at the chance to get my hands on it sooner rather than later.

This Really Isn’t About You tells the story of how, while still in her early thirties, Jean lost her father to cancer—only to learn that she had inherited the same gene that caused it. She writes movingly about the loss of her father, the difficulties of knowing what it is that will one day kill you, and her many encounters with the medical professionals involved in diagnosing and testing her Lynch Syndrome.

But this book is more than that, too. It’s about the importance of family, and how our relationships with them grow and change. It’s about being young and in love, or wanting to be (the chapter on everything Jean loved about London in her twenties will make anyone nostalgic, no matter where they spent that decade). Really, this memoir is a moving and witty account of what it’s like to navigate the highs and lows of adulthood—and how to do it all when life throws you off cours

An amazing mémoir tracing the death of a father and a women coming to terms with an genetic predisposition to cancer

Totally engaging memoir. Valiant, vulnerable, funny and immensely likeable. I didn't want it to end - but of course it ended perfectly.