All At Sea
Decca AitkenheadA beautifully written, breathtakingly honest, unsentimental, profound memoir of love and loss from Decca Aitkenhead - one of our most popular journalists.
"But in the end, it is the author's resilience after her lover's death - which she describes with poised eloquence - that renders the narrative especially satisfying. An unsentimental yet affecting memoir." - Kirkus Reviews
In May 2014, on a hot still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca Aikenhead’s life changed irrevocably. First, her four-year-old son Jake, pootling by the water’s edge in his pyjamas, was dragged out to sea on a riptide. Then Tony, her partner and Jake’s father, dived in to save him but drowned in the process. Bookended by the deaths of her mother in childhood, and Tony this year, All At Sea looks at class, race, privilege and prejudice through the prism of Decca’s life and these deaths. It stares into the dark chasm of our worst nightmare – a random accidental tragedy – and somehow finds the light on the other side.
"This book is impossible to forget: I finished it in one sitting - in a paralyzed, stunned, empathetic trance... its emotional exactitude makes it remarkable... what makes the book powerful is that it reminds one that grief is about transformation, the loss of old moorings, a new permission to put the heart first - a sea change." - The Guardian (UK)