Terry Prone once thought plastic surgery was for the vain, the self-regarding and the rich.

She thought herself the person least likely to submit to the plastic surgeon’s scalpel. But this was before a traumatic car crash in which the steering wheel caved in her cheekbones, broke her jaw and smashed her teeth. In the days and weeks that followed, she began to understand how radically her appearance had changed.

She then embarked on a journey of physical – and emotional – reconstruction that gradually became an addiction. Liposuction. Tooth implants. An arm-lift. Two face-lifts and a brow-lift. Diamond eye surgery. Foot surgery. She found she could not stop.

Mirror Mirror tells the dramatic story of Terry Prone’s experience of plastic surgery on both sides of the Atlantic and reveals the truth about each procedure: discomforts, costs, failures and (mostly) successes. Charged with her remarkable candour, it is an astonishing story of courage and personal reinvention – and a hilarious exploration of the wilder shores of plastic surgery.

TERRY PRONE is a novelist and a leading public-relations consultant.