Reading the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist

At the beginning of the summer, thanks to a competition run by Latitude Festival on Instagram, I was fortunate enough to win a complete set of the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist. I had only read one of these books previously, ‘Playthings’ by Alex Pheby. When another book on the list, ‘The Outrun’ by Amy Lipcot, subsequently won the Wainwright Prize I decided to abandon my reading plans for the summer – which had included finally getting round to reading ‘War and Peace’ – and work my way through this shortlist. It has been a rewarding experience.

My daughter is a second year medical student with a particular interest in neurology. She and her friends treated themselves to a visit to the Wellcome Collection in London at the end of the academic year, something I also hope to do in the future. She read several of the books alongside me and we have enjoyed discussing the topics explored.

“The Wellcome Book Prize is an annual award, open to new works of fiction or non-fiction. To be eligible for entry, a book should have a central theme that engages with some aspect of medicine, health or illness. This can cover many genres of writing – including crime, romance, popular science, sci fi and history.

At some point, medicine touches all our lives. Books that find stories in those brushes with medicine are ones that add new meaning to what it means to be human. The subjects these books grapple with might include birth and beginnings, illness and loss, pain, memory, and identity. In keeping with its vision and goals, the Wellcome Book Prize aims to excite public interest and encourage debate around these topics.”

My own interest is in psychology, a subject I have studied on line in recent years thanks to FutureLearn. Armed with this knowledge I eagerly delved in. You may click on each title below to read my reviews.

Playthings by Alex Pheby

Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

It’s All in Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan

The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Neurotribes by Steve Silberman

These books provided me with an opportunity to read genres that I would not normally choose. Although I do carefully select a small number of non fiction titles each year, I tend to avoid memoirs. I am glad that I was open to the contents of each and every one of the books on this list. I learned from them all.

The winner of the prize was ‘It’s All In Your Head’ by Suzanne O’Sullivan. When I posted my review I discovered that this was a controversial choice. For the first time I received negative feedback from sufferers of the disorders discussed who felt that the author was belittling their ailments by suggesting they were psychosomatic. I found their responses particularly ironic as this is exactly the problem she wrote the book to counter – the continuing and unreasonable stigma associated with psychosomatic illness.

Notwithstanding my brush with angry, on line readers, I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of reading a complete book prize shortlist. So enamoured was I with the quality of the writing I have set myself the challenge of doing it again. In amongst my other planned posts in the coming months you may look out for reviews of those works currently vying for the 2016 Guardian Not The Booker Prize. I will also be reading the 2015 Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist, which has been sitting on my shelves tempting me since last year.

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Book Review: The Last Act of Love

The Last Act of Love, by Cathy Rentzenbrink, is a raw and heartfelt account of sibling love and loss. In the summer of 1990 the author’s brother, Matty, was knocked down by a car on his way home from a night out. Eight years later she and her parents went to court for permission to withdraw all life-sustaining treatment, including nutrition and hydration, to allow him to die. This is the story of how they got to that point, and the effect those eight years and their aftermath have had on Cathy’s life.

At sixteen years old Matty was already over six feet tall. He was a popular, handsome, intelligent young man. He and his sister helped out at their parents’ pub, located in a small Yorkshire town where they were well known and liked. The family was incredibly close.

The children smoked and drank, worked hard and played hard. The were lively and confident, relishing the life opening up to them. Matty had already renovated an old motorbike, learned to drive a car on private land. Although younger than her by a year, he looked out for his sister and she felt proud that he did.

When Matty was taken to hospital after the accident the doctors recognised the seriousness of his injuries but the family retained the belief that he could one day recover. They modified their lives and then their home to accommodate his many needs. Each time he suffered a life threatening setback they asked that he be treated. It was many years before they accepted that this may not be in his best interests, that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Getting to that point changed Cathy forever. Living with having chosen to let her beloved brother die proved devastating. She hid much of what she was feeling from the world. The excesses she turned to in an attempt to distract herself from her grief enabled survival but created their own regrets. That she made it out the other side is an achievement.

I found this quite a difficult book to read, not because of the writing, which is fluid and gripping, but because the pain Cathy conveyed felt so real. I was hurting for her loss, empathising with her guilt and understanding that the hole Matty left could never be filled.

Cathy found some solace when she learned more about Matty’s condition after his death and realised that others who had been through similar experiences felt as she did. She began to learn how to move forward, damaged but no longer feeling the need to hide her scars.

Her story has the potential to help others who have loved and lost as well as those who wish to support them. It is a powerful read.