The World I Fell Out Of

From the award-winning writer of The Times Magazine's 'Spinal Column': a deeply moving and often darkly funny memoir about disaster and triumph Is this what it feels like, I thought, losing everything? Steel shutters were clanging down in my head: I dared not even think about my son, just emerging from his teenage years, or of my sorry future. But I could safely bear witness and carry on writing in my head. A correspondent from a hidden war. On Good Friday, 2010 Melanie Reid fell from her horse, breaking her neck and fracturing her lower back. She was 52. Paralysed from the top of her chest down, she was to spend almost a full year in hospital, determinedly working towards gaining as much movement in her limbs as possible, and learning to navigate her way through a world that had previously been invisible to her. As a journalist Melanie had always turned to words and now, on a spinal ward peopled by an extraordinary array of individuals who were similarly at sea, she decided that...