Starred review from May 16, 2016
While on a relaxing family beach vacation in Jamaica, Guardian journalist Aitkenhead
watched helplessly as her husband, Tony, drowns after rescuing their four-year-old son. Her remarkable memoir recounts the emotional toll his death takes on her and her two sons. The narrative explores how the foggy lens of truth, through which she, as a journalist, previously viewed tragedy, can shatter when tragedy hits home. Aitkenhead and Tony made for an unlikely pair. She covered the political beat for the Guardian while he dealt drugs and smoked crack, with violence part of his life. Yet the couple fell in love and had two sons together, and Tony became a model husband and father. Aitkenhead probes her own psyche to explore the numerous incongruities in her life that surface during her relationship with Tony. She looks at the serious depression that arose in her family when her mother died. Aitkenhead’s tightly written memoir looks beyond commonly held truths, taking readers deep into the morass of human emotion and leaving them gasping for air. Agent: Natasha Fairweather, United Agents.