An Ocean and a Day by Hannah Richell

In 2014, Hannah Richell's husband Matt drowned in a surfing accident at Tamarama, on Sydney's eastern beaches. An Ocean and a Day is her account of the years that followed. It is her first work of non-fiction, after novels including The Search Party and The Peacock Summer.

Most grief memoirs stay with the first raw stretch of loss. This one goes further, into what happens after the early years, when time has done some of its work and the shape of a life has to be remade. Richell writes about those first two years, but also about motherhood, about the country that became her home, and about finding her way back to writing.

It is honest about how hard the days can be, and clear about what is still worth living for. Richell, who is British and Australian, has called it a love letter to her husband and to Australia both.

A memoir of grief, love and going on, for readers of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Leigh Sales' Any Ordinary Day.

'A searing reflection on the fragility of life which never loses sight of the miraculous beauty of being alive.' Leigh Sales, author of Any Ordinary Day

'So much love in every beautiful word. My heart hurt so much and yet I could not look away.' Favel Parrett, author of Past the Shallows