Granta 120: Medicine, Edited by John Freeman

This collection of stories, poems and memoir accounts of suffering are as harrowing as they are oddly uplifting.

Chris Adrian's opening story captures the wavering tone between nervous laughter and tears that streaks through the tales; his professorial medic is delivering a lecture but also having a breakdown.

MJ Hyland presents an emotional portrait of her multiple sclerosis; Rose Tremain's "The Cutting" enacts a 17th century mastectomy reminiscent of Fanny Burney's eye-watering account.