The Diary of a Breast

‘A nurse brought round a form and invited me to fill it in. I wrote: I live alone with two young children. I am about to get divorced. My son is at a school for children with difficulties. I think my mother is an alcoholic. I am a freelance writer and I am probably suffering from stress due to not getting any work.’

In September 1991, Elisa Segrave discovered a lump in her breast. Over the next nine months, Segrave kept a disarmingly honest diary, documenting her treatment but also wryly evoking her troublesome family, her eccentric, cosmopolitan friends and fellow long-suffering NHS patients. The result is an immensely engaging mixture of truth and hilarity, privilege and deprivation, pleasure and pain.

‘Elastic, compassionate and funny.’ Candia McWilliam, Independent on Sunday

‘There are so many things to praise in Elisa Segrave's The Diary of a Breast that it is hard to know where to begin.’ Literary Review

‘A richly funny, highly original book in which the anxiety of illness competes (unsuccessfully) with exuberant life.’Elle

‘Profoundly, gravely funny.’ Financial Times