This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright
ISBN 9781838857462
Published June 1, 2023 by Canongate
Octavia Bright was trying to run away. She was trying to run away from herself. She had various strategies for doing this. She drifted into graduate school in order to run away from making big decisions about which direction to take. And she drank--she drank a lot. While drunk, she engaged in behaviour that was embarrassing at best and nearly fatal at worst--and that's the stuff she could remember. At some point, she realised she needed help and availed of the medical and mental health services available at her university and started on a journey towards herself via recovery. It was often painful and scary, but she took solace in words, her research into the art of Louise Bourgeois and others, her reading of philosophy and spiritual ideas, all of which she shares with the reader. She felt drawn to the sea and spent time there, aiding in her recovery. She was learning a new way of being in the world, but also in her own skin.
About two years into this journey, some odd behaviours of her father, with whom she was very close, were explained when he was diagnosed with dementia. As she learned how to accept and discover the changes in and relationship with herself, she also had to learn to navigate the same with her father.
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.
I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for a review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author.
4 comments:
I love books about family relationships so I would probably love this.
One thing that I found interesting was that even though Bright is decades younger than me, is in a different country than I was when I was her age, and her life circumstances were quite different, I recognized so much of my own experience. And I've gone to the library website and requested one of the books she turns to again and again. I'm always happy when one book leads to another! :-)
This sounds a very interesting read, many thanks for highlighting the book.
All the best Jan
Always happy to share the book love :-)
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