What Does It Feel Like? is Sophie Kinsella’s swan song: her deeply personal reckoning with a terminal stage-4 glioblastoma diagnosis, which tragically took her life recently. I grew up inhaling the Shopaholic series – stories about a woman who believed the right blue silk scarf could change everything. On the surface, those books are light and effervescent, but beneath them runs a thread of genuine terror that anyone who has ever let a credit card spiral out of control will recognise. Kinsella wrote flawed but lovable characters with such energy and warmth that you couldn’t help but forgive their failings.
But she was more than an author. She was a woman with a sparkling sense of humour, dreams, a devoted husband, and five children she dearly loved.
In this novel, Kinsella chronicles her final months: diagnosis, treatment, and the small, intimate moments that make up a life. She does so through an avatar, Eve, whom she explains in the postscript she created so she could write with honesty and without flinching, processing what she calls her “living grief.” Following her diagnosis and brain surgery, Eve’s mind is fractured, and she moves through the world with a heartbreaking optimism that never quite lets go of hope. Page after page, you sense Kinsella’s generosity of spirit: a woman who remained joyful and deeply concerned about not burdening those around her, even in extremis.
Anyone touched by cancer or terminal illness will find this a confronting read, but I urge you to persevere. There is beauty in finality, and Kinsella draws it out with remarkable grace. As her family faces their first Christmas without her, I wish them nothing but peace and love. I will always be grateful for the joy the Shopaholic books brought me, and for the courage it took for Kinsella to put this final, luminous work into the world.
Five silver sequin dresses out of five.
