Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that “decent drapery” which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them…

Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Jenn Ashworth’s book is a stunning read, if not purely for the bravery of the concept. Written whilst recovering from life-threatening illness suffered during the birth of her second child, ‘Notes’ is part auto-biography, part dive into the stormy waters of post-traumatic stress. Yet to frame it in terms of category is to do the book down.

Talking about running might be a good place to explore our experience of hurt and pain, but this is a book read by all, not just runners, for Murakami ‘…running is both exercise and metaphor’.

Photography, Susan Sontag wrote in 1977, risks reducing the world to ‘a series of unrelated, free-standing particles’, the camera making reality, ‘atomic, manageable, and opaque’.