MOST of the bad things that can happen to a person have happened to Liz Martin. In her book, Still Standing, she tells her story. It's a tale of teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, domestic violence, poverty and finally, devastatingly, HIV. It's also a testimony to a basic instinct in every human being: survival.

Martin makes no frills about it.

Her prose is starkly honest and simple. With a life so full of drama, she has shrewdly determined that the best way to tell her story is to say it as it is. No adjectives are necessary to make it more shocking.

The author's childhood begins in a poor but happy family home in the Liberties in Dublin's inner city.

Martin paints a picture of a bright young girl, who she calls Anna, with big dreams of finishing school and becoming a social worker.

With very little fanfare or self pity, she goes on to tell how that life and those dreams began to unravel.

How Anna's bright future starts suddenly hurtling towards darkness.

She writes with an almost detached acceptance about her father's alcoholism and how his addiction left her mother constantly struggling to find money for food. But it was Anna's crucial meeting with 'Simon' that secured her fate.

Despite repeated warnings from her family, Anna falls for Simon.

From the beginning, their relationship is turbulent and fraught.

Then Anna discovers that Simon has become addicted to heroin.

When she confronts him, he hits her in the stomach. She is three months pregnant at the time.

What follows is a sad . . . but perhaps typical . . . tale of domestic abuse and drug addiction. Anna runs away, but Simon always follows. Over the years they have four children together, and have, as Martin writes, a "few special moments in our messed up lives".

Simon continues to abuse heroin, and is eventually diagnosed with HIV. Anna's positive test results arrive shortly later. Having won the battle to survive an abusive marriage and drug-addict partner, Anna is now faced with a whole other war. Martin writes with heartbreaking detail of people's prejudices towards her. She talks of a dentist's hands shaking as he puts stitches in her gum.

Everyone is afraid of the lady with HIV.

The book 'Still Standing' makes for compelling reading. Once you're drawn into the world of Anna, with her hard choices and human decisions, it's difficult to leave. Still, definitely worth a visit.