It starts with a lump on the neck, noticed while shaving and briefly ignored; progresses via a bewilderment of bureaucratic processes to a “gloriously jolly radiologist” dispatching him for a biopsy; and quickly, although not without the delays and mishaps of a painfully overstretched system, lands up with comedian Mark Steel being handed a cancer diagnosis. When Steel asks the consultant whether his tumour is likely to prove fatal, the doctor replies “Touch wood”, and then actually touches some wood; at least, his patient notes, he was being professional about it. Maybe if the cancer had spread, Steel reflects, “they’d offer a more extreme approach and get me to pick up a penny and pass a black cat”.
Cancer is common, and accounts of experiencing its arrival, treatment and – if you’re fortunate – aftermath are hardly rare. But this is not to suggest memoir fatigue. People, and illness itself, are infinitely various, and each chronicle reveals something different in between what have become the tropes of the genre: the shock of the news, the emotional and physical reserves required to endure treatment, the almost inevitably altered perspective on one’s own life and on more existential questions of life and death themselves.
