A powerful memoir from an extraordinary writer about the sudden loss of her young husband

He crashed on to the pillow next to me, heavy as a felled oak. I slapped His face and told Him to wake up. Our daughter, B, appeared in the doorway, woken up by the screaming—I must have been screaming but I don’t remember—and she was crying and peering in. I told her the ultimate adult lie; that everything was all right.

Sudden death is rude. It just wanders in and takes your husband without any warning; it doesn’t even have the decency to knock. At the impossibly young age of 37, as they were making love one night, Lucie Brownlee’s beloved husband Mark dropped dead. As Lucie tried to make sense of her new life—the one she never thought she would be living—she turned to writing to express her grief. This memoir is the stunning, irreverent and heartbreakingly honest result.