“What Does It Feel Like?” is Sophie Kinsella’s deeply personal, autobiographical novella about a successful novelist, Eve, who wakes up after brain surgery to find she has a malignant brain tumor and significant memory loss, and has to rebuild her life, identity, and family routines from scratch. It blends painful medical reality with warmth, humor, and quiet optimism, echoing Kinsella’s own experience with brain cancer and treatment. Readers and reviewers consistently describe it as emotionally intense yet ultimately hopeful, focusing on love, resilience, and the value of ordinary moments.

Quick Scoop

  • Core premise: Eve, a famous novelist, wakes in a hospital with no memory of how she got there and learns a brain tumor has been removed; she must relearn how to walk, talk, write, and parent while facing a frightening diagnosis.
  • Emotional tone: Poignant and sometimes painful, but threaded with gentle humour and a strong sense of gratitude for small, everyday joys.
  • Personal link to Kinsella: The book is rooted in Kinsella’s own diagnosis of glioblastoma (an aggressive brain cancer) in 2022, and she has called Eve’s story “my story,” though told as fiction.

What it feels like to read

Readers often describe the novella as:

  • Heart-wrenching but comforting: scenes of hospitals, chemo, exhaustion, and cognitive struggles are described in vivid, sometimes raw detail, yet there is always a current of love and support from family.
  • Intimate and reflective: the short, snapshot-style chapters feel like stepping into Eve’s private memories and fears, as she holds on to things like holding her husband’s hand or playing family games.
  • Quietly uplifting: despite the terminal diagnosis and memory loss, the narrative keeps circling back to resilience, humour in awkward moments (like frank conversations with doctors or family Scrabble scenes), and the idea that life is still worth living fully.

Themes and messages

The novella leans heavily into a few key ideas:

  • Love and family: Eve’s bond with her husband and children is central; they help her walk again, remember songs, cook, and navigate how and when to tell the kids the truth.
  • Memory and identity: Eve’s memory gaps force her to ask who she is without her old abilities and routines, and which parts of her life matter most when everything feels fragile.
  • Finding joy in small things: Long walks, board games, silly moments with the kids, buying the dress when she sees it—these ordinary details are treated as precious and almost sacred.
  • Humour in darkness: Kinsella deliberately uses humour as a coping tool, both for Eve and for herself; she has said that even with “horrendous news,” she looks for optimism and laughs where she can.

Why it’s different from her usual books

Compared with Kinsella’s earlier, more overtly rom-com style:

  • The tone is quieter, more serious, and more introspective, though her trademark warmth and light touches of comedy are still present.
  • The book is short (around 140–150 pages) and structured in vignettes, giving it an almost memoir-like feel rather than a sprawling plot.
  • Many reviewers call it her most personal work, clearly shaped by her real medical journey and used as a way for her to process what happened.

Current context and “latest news”

  • In 2024, Kinsella publicly revealed she had been diagnosed with glioblastoma at the end of 2022 and had undergone surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, explaining that this experience inspired “What Does It Feel Like?”.
  • The book has since been discussed widely in interviews, online events, and reviews as a brave, cathartic project that lets readers glimpse what brain cancer, memory loss, and recovery can feel like from the inside, while still offering hope.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.