You know the words that are bound to be used when describing this book: harrowing, heartrending, horrible, but more importantly: fantastic, wonderfully written and revealing. For all those of you who wondered what had happened to ballady band Everything but the Girl, Churg-Strauss Syndrome is the answer. It's a little known disease that causes the body's immune system to start attacking the body itself and can result in very painful death. Ben Watt, one half of EBTG, had it, the doctors spent ages misdiagnosing it and he suffered ignominies that are hard to even read about let alone imagine suffering.

The thing that stops this book being a Reader's Digest story of the month is Ben's superb, fluid writing. Without becoming self-pitying or maudlin, he describes what's happening to him with the detachment of a UN observer but the emotion of someone who's very worried that they are likely to die. This is a great book. There are moments where you wish you weren't reading it, but that's not because of the writing - which pulls you back in - but because of Ben's situation. Stephen King never imagined a worse horror.

Get this book.

Ben gives it:

Price: £6.99 (paperback)
Published by: Penguin (ISBN 0-14-025866-3)

last updated: 14th June 1997