'Profoundly affecting' GUARDIAN'Extraordinary. It made me cry' MELISSA HARRISON'Wise and beautifully written' SINÉAD GLEESON'Made me feel that I too was more alive' LUCY CALDWELLA life is made up of many shocks -The scream of wheels over asphalt as cars collide. The unexpected death of a loved one and the long trek of grief. The brutality of teenage girlhood. The abiding temptation of hunger. The stumbling spinning magic of drunkenness. The falling into love, for once utterly awake. The tearing open of a body and of reality itself that comes with birth and motherhood. Anna Beecher tells the story of her life through the moments which remade her in these wise and luminously beautiful essays, for readers of Ann Patchett's These Precious Days or Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am.