Roopa Farooki's biography is astonishing.

She was born in Lahore and grew up in Britain. Her father, a noted Pakastani novelist, abandoned the family when she was 13. She won a scholarship to a private girls school, but could only study arts subjects, thwarting her hopes of becoming a doctor. She studied PPE at Oxford and worked in finance then advertising before becoming a full-time novelist. She wrote her first novel while pregnant with her first child and renovating a house in France.

She has four children and when they all went to school, she borrowed books from the library to study for the entrance exam for medicine. She worked at St George's London, before becoming a junior doctor at London and Kent. Her sister died of breast cancer just before the pandemic.

This book is Roopa Farooki's account of dealing with coronavirus as a junior doctor, and a mother, while still in the throes of grieving the death of her sister.

It is an astonishing book. Beautifully written in fragments, as delicately crafted notes from each of the first 40 days of the pandemic. She interweaves her comments and emotions on the loss of her sister with the practicalities of her working day. She doesn't hold back on her fury and frustration at the government, the system, the management as she and her colleagues fight to care for their patients.

It is brilliant, challenging, moving, enlightening and powerful. I couldn't put it down, and will read it again.