My Year Off: Rediscovering Life After a Stroke by Robert McCrum (Picador, £7 in UK)

AT the age of 42, Robert McCrum, then editor-in-chief at Faber and Faber, was forced to face death when he suffered "an insult to the brain" - a stroke. This riveting report back from "the world of stroke" movingly details the attack, the struggles of convalescence and rehabilitation and the gradual acceptance that life will never be the same. Unusually, the feelings of frustration, anger, despair and love experienced by his wife (of two months) are also revealed, via extracts from her diary. A must-read to understand a little of what a seriously-ill person and their partner go through in time of trauma.