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. For me, it is the final third of the book where the personal salience is introduced. After initially managing his illness, deterioration begins in bursts of progression and stasis heralding Bright’s passage through grief prior, during and after her Father’s death.

KG: The narrative of the book starts seven months after your last drink. Why did you want to begin here, rather than in the throes of addiction? Then, in my early teens, I discovered drinking. It was a failsafe shortcut out of myself. The way the first glass silenced any self-consciousness or doubt. The way the second dissolved the edges of things, and filled me with a sense of tremendous wellbeing. The way the third made my head spin on the last Tube home. This is one of the truest books I have ever read about addiction. Bright is young when she finds herself facing the unpalatable truth that she is an alcoholic. This is a memoir of recovery over many years. It has a beautiful and tragic counterpoint in that as she begins to put her life together, her father's life begins to fall apart. Dementia is unravelling him as fast as she is discovering who she really is.An extraordinary, electrifying book about loss, chaos, addiction and death, and the wild work of staying tender in the face of it’ So when I learnt Bright had a book out I had to get hold of it. And so did half of Wellington judging by how long the reserves list was. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops

Grief is also such a hard topic to cover because how can something so big be put into words in a book, as Bright herself recognises. Again, experiences with grief will differ from person to person, but This Ragged Grace shows an ongoing grief, one that develops, grows, and changes. 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.” 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’OB: I realised recovery is more interesting than addiction. That’s not to say that I haven’t really enjoyed reading about addiction, but recovery always comes at the end, like the wedding in a romcom. But as we all know, that’s the fantasy and the really hard stuff follows. The experience of being trapped in an addictive relationship to any substance is ultimately very monotonous, from a psychological point of view, even if you’re wearing cool clothes and surrounded by avant-garde people. When I first got sober I was susceptible to glamorising what I was leaving behind, and was anxious that recovery couldn’t be interesting and exciting too. I was hungry for stories about recovery, but I couldn’t really find them. 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. 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.

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. KG: The writing of your thesis – on hysteria, Spanish cinema and Louise Bourgeois – is included in the book, and feeds its way in. How did you see its relation to this project? A beautifully written and very moving account of addiction all the places in between, and recovery. OB: I didn’t because it feels like they happened to someone else. When you make a big change like getting sober there is a disruption to a continuous sense of identity. I found it more exposing to write the later chapters because they are so much more who I am now, even if there’s nothing that extreme in them. My wild, addict self – she was fun to write. That’s the difficult thing with writing about dysfunction – those moments of extreme behaviour are often electrifying, both as a reader and a writer.

Fiercely vulnerable, deeply intimate and yet authoritative, The Archaeology of Loss describes a universal experience with an unflinching and singular gaze. With humour, intelligence and urgency, it is in its very honesty that it offers profound consolation. 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.