Elephant: New book on breast cancer journey by Dr Gillian Shirreffs

“Elephant is a book that found me. I’m glad that you have now found it. The book that found me is about mortality. My own mortality.” — Gillian Shirreffs

Elephant centres on a writer facing a breast cancer diagnosis, but it’s not a traditional cancer memoir.

Told through messages, emails, tweets, and interior thoughts, it captures the chaos, loneliness, absurdity and clarity that come when life tilts suddenly and irrevocably. Part modern epistolary, part personal reckoning, it’s written with the same dry humour and emotional precision that made Brodie such a standout.

Shirreffs has been writing about illness for nearly two decades. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2007, she began writing while on bedrest, when her body had shut down and the only thing she could move freely was her mind. What began as a coping mechanism grew into something more—an urgent, unsentimental body of work about what it means to live in a body that won’t behave.

A former HR director and English teacher, she holds a Doctor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Her thesis examined the relationship between object and illness—an idea that runs through all her writing, and especially through Elephant.

The book is already receiving powerful praise:

“‘Elephant’ is about Shirreffs waiting. To be seen, to be told, to be treated, to be scared, to be relieved, to be healed, to be again. Her contemporary notes share the twin burdens of illness and treatment but also care as communion. A masterpiece.” — Professor Victor Montori M.D.

Elephant is a book for anyone who’s sat in a waiting room, felt the weight of silence, or tried to find the right words in the wrong moment. It doesn’t ask for pity. It’s about friendship, memory, rage, humour, and how people keep going when they don’t know how.

Elephant is available in June and available now to pre-order from https://intocreative.co.uk/shop/ and Waterstones.