This Ragged Grace: A Memoir of Recovery and Renewal

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Throughout her journey Bright also shares, initially tentatively, her experience in finding love. Despite the huge undertaking of navigating her way through the pre-mourning process, she realises that to close her heart to loss (as a coping mechanism) is to close her heart to love. She accepts the timing is less than ideal- though in retrospect it may be considered kismet. It is the very essence of life and living; an arbitrary and often inconvenient, messy, yet beautiful chain of events we have no control over.

An intellectually astute and open-hearted account of a life-turned-work-of-art, which draws its reader into conversation with our own attempts at renewal" KG: From the instantaneous drive of the addict to the long work of recovery and the chronic illness of Alzheimer’s, the book also oscillates between different ideas of time.

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. It also reminded me, a little, of Helen McDonald’s Hawk, another book riven by the deep loss of a loved parent, which has things to offer the reader in their own journey’s of loss.

This was a book I requested as an ARC with some trepidation. That is, because I always wonder, a little, what it is that might make me want to read some kind of ‘misery memoir’ where a journey into darkness and probably some degradation looks to be part of the journey.

A beautifully written and very moving account of addiction all the places in between, and recovery. I knew I would love this book because a) Dolly Alderton recommended it b) the Sunday Times Culture magazine recommended it and c) I recently started listening to the Literary Friction podcast (may or may not have been another Dolly recommendation…) and love it.

People talk about ‘being present’ as if it’s a simple thing to do, but when the inside of your head is a hostile environment it is excruciatingly hard to actually be where you are. If you live with anxiety or depression, to be in the moment means facing the slings and arrows thrown by an inner voice hell-bent on dragging you down. This memoir covers seven years in the author's life. During these seven years, her world turned upside down in many ways and by the end of this time, everyone's world had turned upside down as COVID raced around the world. It's a beautiful book and although it might not seem like it on the surface, an uplifting one as well. We all go through really terrible times in our lives and we have to learn how to accept what is, draw on our strengths, and move through them, finding inspiration and courage from wherever we can. Her descriptions of her life while drunk were sometimes harrowing, and her father's slow decline was heartbreaking, but her discovery of inner resources and strengths that she did not know she had was powerful and beautifully communicated. I would definitely read more by this author.Octavia Bright was 27 when she found herself in a psychiatrist’s office being told she was an alcoholic. She writes: “I knew I drank habitually, but I felt that things hadn’t got messy enough to warrant the exaggerated language he was using: alcoholism, Alcoholics Anonymous.” Adding: “I felt judged, though I later came to see the judgment was my own.” The Times Scrupulously honest . . . Threaded through with tantalizing glimpses of the world of archaeology, Tarlow’s book is a raw, courageous examination of a sad ending to an uneasy relationship. This Ragged Grace is a courageous work, filled with a deep tenderness and generosity and authenticity, the voice of Octavia Bright stays with me, it is honest, intricate, raw and real. This Ragged Grace is so beautiful, so bold and so Bright’ So that was my trepidation, and I would not have requested this if it hadn’t been praised as it was by Olivia Laing – who does cover some of the same territory in some of her biographical work, particularly, looking at the work of several artists and writers – that story of artistic genius allied with personal chaos. This Ragged Grace is a courageous work, filled with a deep tenderness and generosity and authenticity, the voice of Octavia Bright stays with me, it is honest, intricate, raw and real. This Ragged Grace is so beautiful, so bold and so Bright”

But now it was starting to sink in that, ultimately, if you’re always on the run from reality, you end up absent from your own life. There on the path, it was simple: I didn’t need a volcano, or a man from the internet, or a pair of red sequined shoes. I was content to be there and nowhere else. This was what I’d heard so many people in the meetings describe over the years. The knowledge that it was possible to be at home inside my own mind, not to need to escape it at all. This was peace. It may sound like a small thing, but it was a revelation, and proof that all the work I’d put into my recovery was worth it. But everyone feels better on holiday, and I wasn’t sure peace was something I’d be able to hold on to when I returned to the city and the pressure of my real-life obligations. The first two thirds are based largely on Bright’s recovery, exploring the themes of addiction because of the desire to escape self and reality via an endless search for oblivion and the concept of loneliness versus solitude. The toolbox of skills, experiences and coping strategies she acquires during this time will later prove invaluable.KG: I was reading Maggie Nelson ’s recent book On Freedom before this, and your story seems to echo her description of the liberation of the addict versus the freedom of recovery. Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina Bracingly candid . . . Digs away at our collective fantasy that in dying or caring for the dying we are at our best. In reality, in either role we are often withdrawn, in pain, resentful, bad-tempered: our worst . . . addictively unsentimental Although Sarah had devoted her professional life to the study of death and how we grieve, she found that nothing could have prepared her for the reality of illness and the devastation of loss.