All at Sea by Aitkenhead, Decca

Low stock: 7 left

221mm x 140mm x 22mm

Pages: 284

Tony always used to tell me to think less and feel more, but I never could. Now that thatGÇÖs all I can do, I can see he was right GÇô and if feelings are his gift from the grave, IGÇÖm afraid of taming them into words.

A beautifully written, breathtakingly honest, unsentimental, profound memoir of love and loss from one of our most popular journalists

In May 2014, on a hot still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca AikenheadGÇÖs life changed irrevocably. First her four year old son Jake, pootling by the waterGÇÖs edge in his pyjamas, was dragged out to sea on a riptide. Then Tony, her partner and JakeGÇÖs father, dived in to save him, but drowned in the process.

Tony GÇô a Northern, mixed race former prisoner, drug dealer and crack addict GÇô GǣBlackGǥ and GǣDeccaGǥ GÇô a prize-winning Guardian journalist from the West Country GÇô had always made an improbable couple. For years they tried to find a way to come together from very different starting places. Tony reformed himself, got an education, and then a job. Decca bore him two sons and they bought a medieval farmhouse in Kent and set about transforming it. A decade on, lying in the sand in their favourite place in the world, young, strong, fit and with their children playing at their feet, they were congratulating themselves on their achievements when everything was ripped away.

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 DeccaGÇÖs life and these deaths. It stares into the dark chasm of our worst nightmare GÇô a random accidental tragedy GÇô and somehow finds the light on the other side.