This Ragged Grace

A Memoir of Recovery and Renewal

Octavia Bright

$24.99

Hardback

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English

Canongate Books
22 August 2023

Memoirs; Addiction & therapy; Coping with illness

I kept putting myself in danger, and I couldn't make it stop. It rarely felt like a choice, though, of course, in some ways it was. It's only the death drive, my dear, Freud would likely tell me, if I lay my body down on his carpet-covered couch. Everybody needs a little oblivion. Besides, what is the fantasy of the knight on a white charger if not an abandonment wish? A desire to be rescued from your own life by a story. But if addiction is rooted in the will to forget, recovery is an act of remembering - a slow reconnection with the parts of yourself that slipped out of reach while you hungered for escape. This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia's journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father's descent into Alzheimer's. Looking back over this time, each of the seven chapters explores the feelings and experiences of the corresponding year of her recovery, tracing the shift in emotion and understanding that comes with the deepening connection to this new way of life. Over the course of this seven-year period, life continues to unfold. Paths are abandoned, people fall ill, waters get choppy, seemingly impossible things are navigated without the old fixes.

As Octavia moves between London, the island of Stromboli, New York, Cornwall and Margate, each place offers something new but ultimately always delivers the same message: that wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

By: Octavia Bright
Imprint: Canongate Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 220mm, Width: 144mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 373g
ISBN: 9781838857462
ISBN 10: 183885746X
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 22 August 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Octavia Bright is a writer and broadcaster. She co-hosts Literary Friction, the literary podcast and NTS Radio show, with Carrie Plitt. Recommended by the New York Times, Guardian, BBC Culture, Electric Literature, Sunday Times and others, it has run for ten years and has listeners worldwide. She has also presented programmes for BBC R4 including Open Book, and hosts literary events for bookshops, publishers, and festivals - such as Cheltenham Literature Festival and events for The Southbank Centre. Her writing has been published in a number of magazines including the White Review,Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, Wasafiri, Somesuch Stories, and the Sunday Times, amongst others. She has a PhD from UCL where she wrote about hysteria and desire in Spanish cinema. @octaviabright_ | octavia.bright

Reviews for This Ragged Grace: A Memoir of Recovery and Renewal

An extraordinary, electrifying book about loss, chaos, addiction and death, and the wild work of staying tender in the face of it -- OLIVIA LAING The intelligence of the writing is a kind of grace in itself - light and deep and beautiful -- DEBORAH LEVY This Ragged Grace examines the fragility of the self in exquisite detail. Generous, compelling, poignant and ultimately, life affirming; Bright has managed to capture the complexity of being human -- HEIDI JAMES A truly enlightening read: poetic, courageous and surprising. Beautiful, intelligent prose and such a brave journey into art, family and the deep structures of an addictive personality. On top of that This Ragged Grace is a love letter to the sea and the wisdom we share with it. I loved it -- DORTHE NORS