Julians reflects on surviving the Covid-19 pandemic in this medical memoir.

Throughout this spirited criticism of England’s pandemic response, the author, a British physiotherapist, asserts that when “our environmental coping mechanisms are taken away, the maintenance of good health may become an impossibility.” She focuses on the mental health toll pandemic restrictions took on communities. Julians’ experiences as a healthcare professional working “in the thick of it” at a clinic through the grueling months of lockdowns and restrictions greatly informs her perspective. She describes her life in early 2020, when she began experiencing back soreness, a nagging cough, and fatigue while on an Austrian skiing trip with her husband. She was eventually diagnosed with Covid-19—by then, the public’s awareness of an uncontrolled infectious global health disaster began tipping over into panic. Widespread lockdown restrictions and isolation ensued, measures that were the opposite of what she advises readers to do. The author recalls how the pandemic detrimentally affected her small business (her clinical practice faced financial uncertainty), her family, and the world around her as she eventually became critical of mask mandates, droplet precautions, furloughs, and the necessity of virtual clinical consultations. Unaccustomed to working with the publicly funded National Health Service, Julians became a vaccinator at Nightingale Hospital. Scattered throughout the book are haunting photographs vibrantly depicting a stark, abandoned London at the pandemic’s peak. The author’s journey through the ordeal palpably reflects the confusion, frustration, and helplessness felt by many; some readers will relate as she questions the true efficacy of the imposed lockdowns, restrictions, and mask mandates. Julians’ perspective offers a bracing critique of her country’s response to one of the world’s darker periods.

A meticulously detailed and sharply observed chronicle of Covid-19 in Britain.