This Ragged Grace cover art

This Ragged Grace

A Memoir of Recovery and Renewal

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This Ragged Grace

By: Octavia Bright
Narrated by: Octavia Bright
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About this listen

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 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.

©2023 Octavia Bright (P)2023 Canongate Books
Addiction & Recovery Biographies & Memoirs

Critic Reviews

"An extraordinary, electrifying book about loss, chaos, addiction and death, and the wild work of staying tender in the face of it." (Olivia Laing)

"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)

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Moving, thoughtful and gentle

What a beautiful and intimate book. Bright resists romanticising or sensationalising her addiction, her recovery or her father’s illness, and I have rarely read a memoir of grief that felt so familiar to my own experience, which was deeply emotional to read, but also reassuring. She weaves introspection, philosophy and art into her beautifully written observations of the world in a way I found both enlightening and soothing. As for the narration, read by the author, she has a lovely voice to listen to and a wonderful calm delivery that makes the writing sing.

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