Reasons to Stay Alive. Matt Haig

Reasons to Stay Alive

section>

Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, including How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys. As a writer for children and young adults he has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and has been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. His work has been published in over forty languages. @matthaig1 matthaig.com

ALSO BY MATT HAIG

The Last Family in England

The Dead Fathers Club

The Possession of Mr Cave

The Radleys

The Humans

Humans: An A-Z

How to Stop Time

Notes on a Nervous Planet

CANONGATE

Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,

14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books

The moral right of the author has been asserted

For permissions credits please see here.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78211 508 3

eISBN 978 1 78211 509 0

Typeset in Granjon by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire.

For Andrea

Contents

This book is impossible

A note, before we get fully under way

1 Falling

The day I died

Why depression is hard to understand

A beautiful view