'Profoundly affecting' GUARDIAN
'Extraordinary. It made me cry' MELISSA HARRISON
'Wise and beautifully written' SINÉAD GLEESON
'Made me feel that I too was more alive' LUCY CALDWELL

A life is made up of many shocks -

The scream of wheels over asphalt as cars collide. The unexpected death of a loved one and the long trek of grief.

The brutality of teenage girlhood. The abiding temptation of hunger. The stumbling spinning magic of drunkenness.

The falling into love, for once utterly awake. The tearing open of a body and of reality itself that comes with birth and motherhood.

Anna Beecher tells the story of her life through the moments which remade her in these wise and luminously beautiful essays, for readers of Ann Patchett's These Precious Days or Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am.

"Anna Beecher's beautiful memoir, written partly in response to the death of her brother, describes in startling detail the highs and lows of existence . . . Beecher isa gifted writer with a knack forcapturing the exquisite detail of intense emotions without beingsentimental, and for rendering the familiar tropes of griefstartling . . . Pain, joy, love, fear: these are the gifts and burdens of life, and in this profoundly affecting book, Beecher has articulated them with precision and beauty" - Observer

"A bravely written and uplifting book, which locates power in the tiniest detail" - Irish Independent

"What Beecher does truly brilliantly is paint vignettes of her past. The search for her husband's lost wedding ring, which a scuba diver miraculously scoops up from the silt and grime at the bottom of a deep rock pool is expertly recounted, and the graphic description she gives of her daughter's birth is gripping in its candidness" - The Times