Very thought-provoking, would make a good book club read as a number of issues are explored. The initial premise is , 'What would you do, if you'd saved all your life for an escape to an island paradise, then your spouse is diagnosed with cancer? Would you spend your nest egg on medical care for your spouse?

Written before Obama Care, it's an education for a Brit like myself, to discover how much medical care costs in the States and what the insurance companies will - and will not - pay, and I've always found it difficult to understand why a First World nation doesn't have a basic level of medical provision for all.

Having said that, through a cast of vibrant, gritty and complex characters, Shriver also explores, degenerative genetic disease, care for the elderly and botched cosmetic surgery of the most intimate kind. Together with the ties that bind family and friends, it is Shriver's brutally honest exploration of our responses to terminal illness, that makes this a read to reflect upon long after it's finished.