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In the midst of a pandemic, when so many have died before their time, the true story of a young man dying of cancer and his devastated girlfriend’s battle with grief may not appeal. But The Mahogany Pod tells a touching and unexpectedly timely tale of enduring love.

Jill Hopper is 23 when she moves into a shared house on the island of Osney and meets housemate Arif. They are already falling in love when Arif learns his lymphoma has returned and is untreatable.

Jill compares it to being on a beach and seeing your friend drowning.

“Do you watch him struggling or do you get into the water?” she writes. “I couldn’t stand to watch him suffering and not suffer myself. I didn’t want him to be alone. I got into the water.”

Arif died nine months later, the day before his 25th birthday.

Jill’s memoir flits between their life together, and her grief, then up to the present day when she is a happily married mother of one. It is deeply personal and in places searingly sad but relatable to anyone who has loved and lost.

For Jill, writing has clearly been cathartic, a way of processing some of the trauma. And as much as this is a memoir about death, it is also an uplifting story of embracing love no matter how dark the circumstances, about building a life even after the worst has come to pass.

Perhaps this is the perfect book to read during a pandemic after all.