This Is Not a Pity Memoir

A moving memoir from the award-winning screenwriter and playwright Abi Morgan about what happens when the person you love most no longer recognizes you

One afternoon, Abi Morgan returned home to find her longtime partner and father to their two kids collapsed on the bathroom floor. Jacob, who had been undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis, had suddenly experienced a series of seizures and had to be put into a medically induced coma. As he slowly regained consciousness after six months, he made tentative steps to communicate with those around him, and grappled with the host of issues that had been triggered by the damage caused to his brain. But while Jacob recognized his family and friends, he didn’t believe that the Abi standing in front of him—who had sat by his hospital bed, juggled care of their children, and liaised with his slew of doctors as he slipped between life and death—was in fact his Abi. Instead, he saw a woman whom he believed to be an imposter.

Starting with Jacob’s first collapse and set over the course of two years since, This Is Not a Pity Memoir is a story about love and family. Abi describes with unflinching honesty and nuance the extraordinary and terrifying challenge of caring for a loved one in the wake of devastating illness. The book asks: How do you bring back someone who relies on you for recovery and yet no longer recognizes you? How do you reckon with the shared years that came before? And most of all: How do you navigate this new life together?