Michael Rosen as a bibliotherapist

In Getting Better, Michael Rosen takes the reader on a different kind of bear hunt, setting out to answer the question 'Who am I now?', in the aftermath of his Covid-19 hospitalisation. It is, as with his previous book about his illness, Many Different Kinds of Love, sewn together with deep respect and appreciation for the NHS staff, family, and friends who saved his life and supported his recovery.

He reflects upon the difference between the medics doing things to him, and giving drugs to help him get better, and the physios who taught him the skills to forge his own recovery path, and aims to encourage that sense of agency in the reader, whatever their struggle.

From the off, Rosen states his intention not to make a drama about his recovery and his conversational style is often characteristically humorous. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong narrative therapy leaning; Rosen refers to PTSD, but playfully reinvents this as his 'Lonely Corridor Syndrome', evoking memories of being in a hospital corridor in the middle of the night, confused, alone, and likely very afraid. Taking memories and experiences, described as being whizzed in a blender, Rosen steps back to examine them in context and find the most helpful story.

He guides the reader through chapters exploring family experiences of the Holocaust, the death of his son Eddie, and his own near-death experiences, always with his good eye on self-empowerment and sense-making. With tips drawn from his recovery and expertise in writing, he invites the reader to have a go too, inventing names for his methods. Psychologists may notice elements of deconstruction, externalising, mindfulness, behavioural activation, and thought diffusion.

Some things are not possible to make sense of, and often too painful to even speak about, but it seems that in writing Getting Better, Rosen creates safe corridors of connection between memories, perhaps previously too painful to walk amongst. One chapter seems slightly awkward, and most powerful in what it doesn't explicitly say.

When considering past paranoia and victimhood, it feels as if Rosen takes the reader right to the edge of his 'Pool of Glum', puts on his protective shields, and turns the emotional volume off before stepping into the corridor to the next chapter, containing his story of Eddie's death. Rosen writes himself escape routes from the emotional pool, and after tackling the most challenging topics imaginable, emphasis shifts to physical aspects of Rosen's post-Covid-recovery, reconnecting the lonely corridors to life.

Of course, we see it is not as simple as this; loss and illness overlap and reappear in different chapters, and future change is both inevitable and uncertain. Communities of people with Long-Covid coined the term 'alive but not living', and like Rosen describe how their often invisible difficulties have left them feeling ghosts of their former selves. By writing and sharing his recovery story, expressing what he describes as 'the impossible', Rosen says there is temporary relief in making the subjective, objective.

Rosen offers hope of a path to recovery with traditional tips for mind and body healing, and ideas for 'playing with words', which I think of as his therapy for the heart and soul. Rosen is mindful that not everyone receives the personal, public and professional support that he describes as being central to his recovery, so the book is to be read with the acknowledgement that some may need additional support to access the agency, creativity and self-compassion that Rosen encourages. Yet it is a book full of hope, a story of going under, over and through difficulties.

Reviewed by Dr Jo Kirk, clinical psychologist and poet.