The story of how Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, and three other people fell ill after eating wild mushrooms is like an Ian McEwan novel. It’s another example that real life can be stranger and more hard-hitting than anything written by a novelist or a screenwriter.

The Guardian has an interview with Evans.

The poison ravages their bodies, the violent vomiting of blood and bile remorseless as one by one all four go into kidney failure. Only the thought of his (Evans’) youngest son, just six years old, keeps the man clinging to life. To his horror, he realises that each couple’s will grants the other couple custody of their children, in the event of the parents’ death. All their children may soon be orphaned. Fearing the worst, he calls his solicitor from his sick bed and has a new will couriered up to Scotland, as the four fight for their lives.