📱 eBook en inglés STILL - A MEMOIR

Julia Kellys mother, Delphine, spent much of her life in the shadows as a politicians wife, tending selflessly to the needs of her husband, John, and five wild children. Rattling around in a draughty house, the siblings – though much-loved – are left largely to their own devices, tended to by a series of hapless au-pairs, dodging mouse invasions and forever in search of their exhausted mothers attention.

When John collapses of a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine, it is a sad liberation for his wife. Unshackled from her domestic duties, Delphine undergoes a transformation. She embraces sea-swimming and, along with a coterie of elderly ladies, sets out on adventures to far-flung places. Her final journey is to the Galapagos Islands where, hit by an unexpected wave, she loses her balance and is forced underwater. When her body surfaces she is no longer breathing. The book left on her bedside locker in the hotel is 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

Mired in grief, the five siblings begin the long repatriation of their mothers body. But it is the post-mortem report that provides the key to Julias healing and recovery: gradually, within the clinical descriptions of limbs and eyes, heart and toes, Julia finds solace. Taking inspiration from each body part, she breathes life into Delphine – finally still and fully present for the first time in her seventy-two years – in gorgeous, luminous prose.

What leaps from the pages of STILL is someone unforgettable: a vibrant, complex woman, whose endless capacity for love continues to inspire and comfort. In the end, She died as she had always strived to live: in the middle of a huge adventure, diving into the great unknown.