As someone going through her own neurological issues (and at time of writing, investigations into a possible Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis) this was a hard book to read and equally review. As it is a memoir about her own life and her partner’s illness, I don’t want to write this like a normal book review, but I will mention a few points that stood out for me.

This book felt very much like a rambling of thoughts, and I mean this in a good way. We are getting front row seats to Abi’s life, her joys and triumphs, her sadness and failures. She is opening up to us and nothing is off limits and I feel privileged to have been allowed access.

There is a humour here, something only someone who has experience a life-threatening condition can appreciate. A lot of people who aren’t in the inner circle of illness or grief question how you can still smile and laugh, but you have to or you’ll end up spending your whole life crying, and that’s no fun at all.

Abi doesn’t hide away from the dark and difficult moments, the sadness or the grief at losing her husband as she once knew him. This had the power to be quite frightening but it wasn’t. She was honest and there’s something beautiful about that.

There’s a line in it that I think sums up the glory and the devastation of modern medicine: “Does shame lie with the cruelty of medicine that works so hard to save a life, yet gives no promise of actually bringing the person back?” Is there a shame in not wanting a life to be saved if it’s not worth living? Or should we save all lives regardless of the consequences? It’s a quandary many of us have considered. I know that when my late grandmother was very sick with dementia, every time she went into hospital with infections or other illnesses, the medical staff (as brilliant as they are) were only interested in treating the illness, keeping her alive and sending her home. But she didn’t want to be here. And truth be told, I’m not sure we did either. Is there a taboo around wishing that?

I imagine neither Jacob nor Abi would want to be known as inspirational and i understand that, but I’m still going to say they are. Abi lived through her own cancer diagnosis, treatment and surgery, whilst raising her two children, running a house, and caring for her very poorly husband. All of that must have been emotionally, mentally and physically draining even to put one foot in front of the other. Jacob will no doubt say he’s done nothing inspirational, all he’s done is fall ill and survived it. But that’s why. As someone who is having to get used to being cared for herself, I can understand how difficult it can be. And even surviving such a terrible illness is an inspiration in itself. But together, they are a team and they get through it and show that you can climb every mountain and come back down again.

I will finish with Abi’s on words on her book: “There are no such things as pity memoirs, only words on a page and if they mean something to someone, they are worth being said.”

I would struggle to be able to review this book due to issues with the file/download. The issues stopped the flow of the book. The issues are:
- Missing words in the middle of sentences
- Stop/start sentences on different lines
- No clear definition of chapters.

Not sure if it was a file/download issue but there were lots of gaps, stop/starts which really ruined the flow. I would love the chance to read a better version as the description of the book appeals to me.

This Is Not a Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan is a memoir about love and family and the impact of serious illness.

You’ll know Abi Morgan as one of the UK’s finest scriptwriters, and so you won’t be surprised when she takes her red pen to the improbably traumatic last few years of her life:

“Not cancer too. It’s too repetitive after the coma.”

It’s funnier when she says it, mind: funnier and more devastating; a gut-punch that will reduce you to tears. This Is Not A Pity Memoir is a no-holds barred, warts-and-all love story, brutal and brilliant and true. This is a stunning piece of work, and the best thing I have read so far this year.

“[N]o-one can prepare you for the utter shock of the backflip, the left-field pitch, the curveball, that knocks all that you are, all you have known, for shit. If it’s coming for you, it’s coming for you. No point trying to hide from it.”

Thank you Abi, thank you Jacob, for sharing your story at the time I needed to hear it the most. Wishing you both every happiness.

My thanks to Netgalley for my copy of This is Not a Pity Memoir, a heartbreaking but ultimately heartwarming story of the collapse of Abi Morgan's husband and his and the family's fight to bring him back.
I have enormous respect for the author's strength of spirit, love and determination as she fought for her husband, supported her children through this trauma, earned a living, ran a household, fought cancer herself and made enough notes to share their story with us. It would have broken many of us but they came out the other side, not whole but new.
Anyone reading his book would inevitably wonder, as Abi Morgan did, how others without the family's resources of money, family and friends would cope and of course there is no known answer but the fact is that all the resources available to the author were in fact earned by he author, her husband and their two children in the lives they'd led previously, the loyalty and support they received was what they were due having already nutured the love of others, known by many as Karma.

"There is no such thing as pity memoirs, only words on pages and if they mean something to someone, they are worth being said."

This is Not a Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan is a sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, always honest account of a devastasting event that her family went throught. This is not a pity memoir - it's a memoir of loving and living, through the good times and the dark times.

If I you are wanting a great escape this is exactly the book you will want to read. You will be so glad you did! The premise of this book sounded interesting from the very beginning.

Thanks to John Murray Press and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is really well written, but heartbreaking. I’d seen one of Abi’s works (Suffragette) but only realised that she wrote it after starting to read this book.

Without giving too much away, the book highlights the challenges that we can face, whether that’s in the form of health or work, and how resilience, family and friends can play a part in that. It’s moving.

Heartwrenching, hopeful, a testament to love, family and loyalty. There is also humour, a lot of it bleak, but it lightens the reading of what is a devastating story.

Very best wishes to Abi, Jacob and their families.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC.

A really honest, warts-and-all memoir that is somehow more touching simply because it is so brutally honest. Morgan does a fantastic job of narrating the events and emotions experienced during her partner’s acute long-term illness and how their relationship changes during that period.

This is Not a Pity Memoir completely blew me away. It is a powerful, unflinching examination of a family’s life after the unthinkable happens: their father/partner becomes critically ill and then has a long recovery ahead with the possibility that he may never fully recover. I had long admired the work of Abi Morgan so knew the writing would be excellent but I had no idea about her personal life and what her family has been through when I read this: she articulates all the fears and worries and frustrations and dark thoughts and basic logistical nightmares that come with a family member’s illness exceptionally. When you think this family cannot take anymore, Morgan reveals she then had her own health worries to contend with. And yet despite all of this, the memoir is not a depressing read - it is a story of resilience and puts any trivial concerns the reader may have into perspective. For those going through similar life events, I can only imagine that it may make them feel less alone as despite the amount of support Morgan herself had, she is very honest about the loneliness the situation created. I particularly recommend this to anyone who has also loved Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir ‘I am, I am, I am’ as it is completely alters your perspective on life in a similar way.

I was somewhat skeptical about the title of this book - when you've had as many things happen to you as Morgan in such a short space of time I think you're are entitled to feel a little sorry for yourself.

For me this book read very oddly - in an effort to be up-beat it came off as distant and unemotional and to be honest so polished as not to feel read.
I may have had a much less severe brain injury that depicted here but I know that my family were not so upbeat and positive at the time, and it was much scarier than Morgan depicts.
I'm also not convinced that any family can be that perfect and the children so unaffected.

If this was one of Morgan's scripts I don't think it would be accepted as is. I realise that this is Morgan's version of two horrific years in her life and that she is entitled to tell her story as she wishes but this felt like fiction and not a memoir.

This was such a good, moving read. And I think Abi Morgan sums it up brilliantly at the end of the book ( this is not a spoiler) .


There is no such thing as pity memoirs, only words on pages and if they mean something to someone, they are worth being said.

Abi Morgan to many would have the perfect life…. Successful film script writer, loving actor partner, 2 teenage children , a London home and a holiday house in Italy…

But Jacob, Abis partner, is found collapsed one day at home and it is over a year before he returns home. The impact of medication that has been withdrawn that was treating his MS. The effect on him is devastating… months in a coma, in hospital for rehabilitation …. And in the midst of it all Abi is diagnosed with breast cancer.

This is a story of dealing with the darkest of times. Laced both with humour and with darkness. And love that shines through.
Am in total admiration of Abi and her family. Yes, to some this might be a pity memoir, but to me it’s a memoir of love and hope.

A very immersive read and an honest account of lives totally upended. I was utterly absorbed in Abu Morgan’s account of the day that changed everything for her family - what it meant for her husband, their relationship, her children. So much to think about and so much admiration for her as a person.

Abi Morgan and her family are thrown a curve ball when Jacob, her partner and father of her teenaged children, becomes suddenly and seriously ill which changes all of their lives irrevocably. This Is Not a Pity Memoir describes what happens over the next few years with honesty and grit, and shows how quickly we recalibrate our lives to cope with life’s twists and turns. Despite the serious subject matter, Abi retells their story in such a way that, although heartbreaking at times, isn’t a depressing read. As she says, by sharing their experience, hopefully this book offers solace and reassurance to those who find themselves navigating similar straits.

I'm not quite sure how to review this. I requested this for review because I thought I recognised the author as someone I'd read before but I was wrong. Nevertheless the title intrigued me.

It was a brutally honest telling of the life Abi and her family have found themselves living. How one family can go through so much and still find a smile is incredible.

I felt like the words had been vomited onto the page, in that when you are sick you can't control it - it all just comes thrusting out.

There's no happy ending. No neat finish. It is life.

I couldn't put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, and thank you Abi Morgan for being real!

I had no preconceptions about this book at all, and I was only 10% into the memoir, when I found myself googling (other search engines are available) the author. Brutally honest, refreshingly abrupt and sufficient humour to keep you engrossed. An incredible memoir and in no way pitiful... I have already raved about this to my friends, and want to be best friends with Abi...but only if she doesn't include me in her next book.

Abi Morgan's long term partner and father of her children suffers a sudden illness which leaves him in a coma. It's a long rehabilitation that leaves him unable to remember things or care for himself. This memoir pulls no punches and doesn't stray into 'inspirational' territory, it gives a frank and honest look into long term illness and how it affects the rest of the family. I struggled slightly with the writing style but overall it was an interesting read.

“One morning in June, Abi had her to-do list - drop the kids to school, get coffee and go to work. Jacob had a bad headache so she added 'pick up steroids'. She returned home and found the man she loved and fought and laughed with for twenty years lying on the bathroom floor.

And nothing would ever be the same again.”

After reading the above in the publisher’s description I assumed that Abi’s husband had in fact died but quickly realised that in fact he’d suffered what seems to have been an almost catastrophic reaction to a drug he’d been taking for his MS. The memoir describes the time leading up to Abi finding Jacob in the bathroom, before an almost stream of consciousness style of narrative in which we follow her thoughts backwards and forwards from the time when she met Jacob, their early time together, and then his lengthy time in hospital. I completely admire the author’s resilience in the face of what happened to Jacob – not only was he seriously unwell but also the fact that when he came out of his coma he recognised members of the family but not Abi, thinking she was an imposter, which was devastating. Abi’s ability to pick herself up from this and carry on working, caring for her children etc is nothing short of amazing (to me).

A couple of reviews, amongst other things, describe this book as ‘funny’ which is not a word I’d use and, although I am in awe of Abi’s resilience I found the book actually quite monotonous (as she has acknowledged, visiting someone in hospital day after day isn’t necessarily the most interesting). A remarkable story of one family’s ability to pick themselves up and carry on in the face of a traumatic event but not one I’d necessarily be recommending to other people I’m afraid although I was glad of the opportunity to read this.

"I enjoyed this book" feels like the wrong thing to say when the book is about such a traumatic period in someone's life, but I'm very glad that I read it.
The writing style is very different. It jumps around between different time periods and changes person too - one second, she's referring to her sick husband as 'you', the next as 'he'. I didn't mind - in fact, rather enjoyed - skipping between time periods, but found the change of pronoun a bit disconcerting. It interrupted the flow of my reading sometimes. Although perhaps, with hindsight, it served to make the story even more personal than it already is.
At times, I was a little bored which feels like a terrible thing to say but Abi herself says that a lot of this stuff, the waiting around in hospitals etc, is boring. But at other times, the writing just blew me away. Completely blew me away. It felt fresh and different and quirky and real all at once and I found myself feeling rather envious of Abi's skill as a writer. For that reason, I'm giving the book five stars.