This Ragged Grace, ‘A Memoir of Remembering and Forgetting’, follows Octavia Bright’s life over the course of seven years as she embarks on her recovery from alcoholism, a journey which takes her from London to Stromboli, New York to the English seaside (Cornwall and Margate). As a fan of Wild and The Outrun, this should have been right up my street. So why wasn’t I blown away? One reason I can think of is that I’ve finally read too many memoirs about alcoholism. Though I signed up for a lost-to-found story, I often found ‘This Ragged Grace’ tropey and laboured. What was original about Bright’s tale however was the account of her father’s parallel descent into Alzheimer’s and her moving reflections on grieving a person who’s still alive. Despite its cliches and mid-book slump, Bright’s prose is often beautiful, and I’m interested to see what she writes next. MG

Published by Canongate Books