Hilary loves and cares for 33-year-old Victor, who is dying of leukaemia. To Hilary, Victor is fascinating, witty, intelligent, complex. But as his health deteriorates life with him becames more difficult and she seeks escape in an affair with Gordon, who in turn befriends Victor - an extraordinary love triangle.
This was of course turned into a movie with Julia Roberts in the role of Hilary. I have never watched it. As I every so slight hypochondriac LOL I tried to avoid books which talk about dying and terminal illnesses. Well, since I encounter it at work on a daily basis, I do find that it is helpful though to get some sort of insight into a dying person's mind - though this is fiction of course, but quite believable. I found Victor a very unpleasant character, rude and unthankful to his love Hilary. We tend to see and define people by their terminal illness, but of course they are still a person with loves and hates,hobbies, friends etc. But here is shows how life appears to disintegrate with a terminal diagnosis - and not in a way I can comprehend, eg. he becomes rude and uncaring to me rather than thankful and happy to have a wonderful person caring for him. The book wasn't a 'page-turner' for me, but retrospectively, I can say that it gave me an importnat different insight into living with a terminal illness.
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