The Guardian’s book blog gives a round-up of some fiction’s finest depictions of illness, both physical and mental.

There are those who purposefully push themselves past their limits, like silly Marianne of [Jane Austen's] Sense and Sensibility, beset with longing, racing through the rain until lovesickness becomes actual sickness. Then there are those for whom diseases come for no rhyme or reason—Tiny Tim’s beatific suffering in [Charles Dickens's] A Christmas Carol, or the slackening of body and mind through Alzheimer’s in Louise Dean’s splendid Becoming Strangers (nominated for the Guardian’s first book award).

It’s an interesting topic, but I can’t help but feel a little let down with some of the choices: readers’ comments on the best depictions of illness are more interesting than the post itself. I’d toss in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which showed serious mental illness as most people might imagine it to be: frightening, confusing, and distressing in its calm irrationality. As for physical illness, I don’t think you can get much sicker than Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone; Ebola is one of the scariest viruses ever and Preston’s nonfiction book depicts it in all its stomach-churning glory. I’m also tempted to mention Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but it’s been so long since I’ve read it that I can’t even remember much about it. Does having a god complex count as mental illness?