This is Not a Pity Memoir: The heartbreaking and life-affirming bestseller from the writer of The Split

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If this work is made into a screenplay, I hope it wins awards - and for Jacob I hope those award ceremonies bring cake, lots and lots of cake! There's no denying that Morgan went through a lot. Her partner of 20 years (and father of her two children), Jacob, has MS. He took an experimental drug and developed anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis that left him in a coma. When he woke up, he didn't recognize her and declared her an imposter (Capgras syndrome). In the meantime, she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment. The idiosyncratic writing had no flow and was like stream-of-consciousness, but being careful planned and edited, it didn't have the immediacy of that kind of writing. I kept on going despite the writing frustrating and even annoying me, just to get to how she dealt with her partner's thinking she was not herself but a duplicate. But when I eventually got there, through his illness, his hospitalisation, her own health issues, and everything else, there was hardly anything about it. It wasn't the main focus at all. Damp squib.

It really happened. And what no one tells you about proper unfolding tragedy is that it is scary, and adrenalizing. This is a story of dealing with the darkest of times. Laced both with humour and with darkness. And love that shines through. 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) . One afternoon, Abi Morgan returned home to find her longtime partner and father to their two kids collapsed on the bathroom floor. Jacob, who had been undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis, had suddenly experienced a series of seizures and had to be put into a medically induced coma. As he slowly regained consciousness after six months, he made tentative steps to communicate with those around him, and grappled with the host of issues that had been triggered by the damage caused to his brain. But while Jacob recognized his family and friends, he didn't believe that the Abi standing in front of him—who had sat by his hospital bed, juggled care of their children, and liaised with his slew of doctors as he slipped between life and death—was in fact his Abi. Instead, he saw a woman whom he believed to be an imposter. It also teaches us about being grateful for the things we have and the strength of the human spirit when they are hammered with tragic situations yet still find the heart to pull through. It also gives us an appreciation for all the caretakers out there, the ones who took care of people during Covid, and the families and friends who care for their loved ones selflessly.Jacob doesn’t recognise Abi, he wants nothing to do with her. My husband has been left with STML, all our shared memories have gone, it’s a real conversation killer!! This novel is full of clinical details that will be so useful for Nursing and Medical staff in these situations. I fully intend to buy copies for our local teaching hospital library, to say thanks for all their skilled care of my husband. What a talent, what a career, what a life, and what a treat to relive it all with this most down-to-earth of demigods.

Abi’s husband Jacob, collapses after a drug that he was taking to control his MS, is withdrawn. He spends a year recovering, the results are devastating for the family and Jacob. Possibly cut with a montage to include the walk on Primrose Hill with my mum and Mabel and ice-skating at Somerset House in those last days of December.The author was concerned about building a life for the future together, with a man who would forever need carers, be physically-challenged and never be able to be intimate again. I do admire her for these efforts of building a life without passion, without even possibly sharing a bed again. Carer, parent and friend, but not lover - not an easy choice for a future. I understand 'for better for worse' but they weren't, in fact, married.

The kind of book you will find yourself saying urgently, over and over, to friends. 'Have you read it? Have you read it?'" - Caitlin Moran When the partner of Emmy Award–winning screenwriter Abi Morgan abruptly collapsed from a mysterious illness, doctors were concerned that he would not survive. Then, six months later, Jacob woke from his coma, to the delight and relief of his family and friends—except this proved to be anything but a Hollywood ending. Because to Jacob, the woman standing at his bedside, who had cared for him all these months, was not his partner. Not his children’s mother. Not the woman he loved. Sure, she looked like his Abi, but this was an imposter, living someone else’s life. When you think you're going to die, it becomes very clear what you need to stay alive, and you don’t need as much as you think And maybe with me circling the heath, mist low, dog in tow, looking mournfully at Hampstead Ponds, icy and freezing. But really, what she has learned has mostly to do with love. “Let’s be honest. I’m a tufty-haired, one-breasted, fiftysomething woman who’s got a few Baftas and yes, that’s brilliant. But life also goes in cycles. I am not the big I-am. I think my greatest fear is to end up some old buffer at Bafta. Being with Jake, and what we went through as a family, has changed us. We have a greater appreciation of each other. We’ve seen each other at our worst moments. I didn’t realise I loved Jake so much – that’s the biggest revelation. It’s such a platitude, isn’t it, love? But… this hum. That’s the only way I can describe it. I just have this hum for Jake that I don’t have for anyone else.”Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman. The trauma of Morgan’s life has seeped into The Split – particularly the third and final series, which concluded this week. “I think it’s filled with a lot of the pain, a lot of the passion of what I’ve gone through,” she says. A remarkable story, certainly, and one worth reading about (if only through a couple of long magazine articles), but not a stand-out memoir for me. In response Morgan says: ‘I am so embarrassed. I am found out. “Me,” I want to shout. “I want to read it. Me.” But I don’t.’