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Title: C

Author: John Diamond

Narrator: Neil Pearson

Format: Abridged

Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-28-06

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

Shortly before his 44th birthday, John Diamond received a call from the doctor who had removed a lump from his neck. Having been assured for the previous 2 years that this was a benign cyst, Diamond was told that it was, in fact, cancerous. Suddenly, this man who'd until this point been one of the world's greatest hypochondriacs, was genuinely faced with mortality. And what he saw scared the wits out of him. Out of necessity, he wrote about his feelings in his Times column and the response was staggering. Mailbag followed Diamond's story of lifewith, and without, a lump, the humiliations, the ridiculous bits, the funny bits, the tearful bits. It's compelling, profound, witty, in the mould of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

©1998 John Diamond; (P)2001 Random House AudioBooks

Critic Reviews:

"Diamond is unstintingly honest, so we get the whole man with all his personal strengths and foibles." (Amazon.co.uk)

Members Reviews:

Laugh until you cry

This is one of the first books that I read when I was diagnosed with the same cancer as Mr. Diamond. It's an incredible book and I have recommended it to everyone I know, not just family and friends but health care professionals who treat cancer patients. It will take you inside what it is like to have cancer but at the same time it is also a really funny book. Somehow in the midst of the horror that is head & neck cancer Mr. Diamond is able to see the absurdity, irony and humor and show it to us. The same book is also available with the titleBecause Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.

Wonderfully real, witty, droll and sad....

I hadn't heard of John Diamond till his wife Nigella Lawson became so well known- I wish I had known of him earlier and followed his various columns. It's always terrible when someone has an awful illness and dies, but wonderful to get some small insight into it and the real suffering encountered. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a book they simply cannot put down- as strange as it seems! Extraordinarily written and full of integrity.

Five Stars

Very moving book.

Well written.

Well written with candor.

And it is testament to his terrific prose and probing insights that I managed to read ...

Being a reasonably squeamish individual, I am not in the habbit of picking up books devoted to any kind of illness - let alone cancer. But then I was drawn to the strangely chirpy cover of this book not by its title but by the name John Diamond. I was familiar with his writing long before his cancer columns in The Times. And it is testament to his terrific prose and probing insights that I managed to read this book in no more than a few days. His definition of cancer at the begining of the book is memorable for both its clarity and wit. But if there's one thing that strikes the reader throughout, it is the overwhelming passion for life. Even when things get tough - and they get pretty damn tough - Diamond manages to find something worth living for - whether it's the simple pleasures of being in one's own home and experiencing the smells of domestic life, or simply going to buy new clothes.

Don't be put off by the 'c' word. This is a minor masterpiece. A celebration of life - not the dwelling on death.

God bless you, John Diamond.

Alex Pearl, author of 'Sleeping with the Blackbirds'