GROUNDHOG DAY

Author Sophie Kinsella Needed Daily Reminding She Had Cancer After Losing Memory

‘The Confessions of a Shopaholic’ author lost her short-term memory after undergoing surgery for incurable brain cancer.

Sophie Kinsella has revealed that her husband had to remind her every day that she had incurable brain cancer after she suffered short-term memory loss following surgery to remove the tumor. She said her husband, Henry, “had to tell me more than once, over and over, this bad news, ‘You've got cancer and it's incurable’,” she said in a British TV interview. “I don't know how he did it. I think that's where he showed his greatest love for me.” The Confessions of a Shopaholic author, whose real name is Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was promoting her new semi-autobiographical book, What Does It Feel Like, about her battle with cancer. The “aggressive and fast-growing” tumor was removed in 2022 in an emergency eight-hour operation, but when Kinsella came around, she couldn’t remember having cancer. “It was absolutely bizarre,” she told interviewer Lorraine Kelly. “That's in the book as well, what it's like to lose your memory. I lost my short-term memory. So, I would be told what had happened and I'd be like, ‘Oh yes I understand that now,’ and the next day I'd forgotten.”

‘LONELY AND SCARY’

Author Sophie Kinsella Reveals Devastating Brain Cancer

Edith Olmsted