When I mentioned in my review of Siri Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories that some of the most impactful books on dealing with death and grief seem to be written by seriously good women writers, several people recommended Hannah Richell’s An Ocean and a Day.
Richell is a successful author, whose husband Matt died in a surfing accident at Tamarama Beach in 2014. Matt was the CEO of publisher Hachette Australia, so this is another literary couple whose life revolved around books.
Hannah also worked in publishing – in fact, Matt beating her to the senior job she wanted was how they met – before becoming an author in her own right.
At the time of Matt’s death, he was just 41 and they had two young children.
It took 10 years for Hannah to write this book, drawing on extensive journals that she kept. It’s beautifully written, very raw and emotional, not shying away from the difficulty she had dealing with her husband’s sudden death. She’s a lyrical writer, very descriptive, unafraid to delve deep into the psychology of coping with Matt’s death.
The book is structured as a series of vignettes, flitting backwards and forwards between the time they met, their early years together in the UK, their move to Australia, travelling across this country, settling down in Balmain, having children as Matt climbed the corporate ladder while Hannah established herself as a novelist, and the shock of Matt’s death and its subsequent impact on her and her family.
It’s a great format, swinging between the past and the present, with the 2014 tragedy at its centre, well sign-posted with dates and places as chapter headings.
I haven’t read any of Richell’s other books, but they could hardly be more powerful than An Ocean and a Day. Her grief, pain, and fear is almost tangible. Equally, the distance of a decade has given her room and time to come to terms with what happened, not in a sense of acceptance but in moving forward because there’s no other direction to take.
I found it extremely moving and there was much I could identify with, although – as with the other books I’ve mentioned before – her situation was unique and very different to mine.
Richell made some interesting choices in her book, such as never revealing her son and daughter’s names. I imagine this was a protective choice – the intrusive nature of media coverage is a recurring theme – but it’s a bit confusing as she gives her children’s names on her website, and limiting herself to only ever referring to “our son” or “our daughter” has a slightly distancing effect when so much of her writing is so intimate.
I found it interesting that Richell recounts several authors she read trying to make sense of things, many of them the same authors I’ve been reading. In fact, she lists them with a relevant quote in a Sources section at the end. I guess this is something those who are readers and have lost someone do.
Of course, I cried a lot while reading An Ocean and a Day but I think anyone would. The way Richell lost her husband, and her children their father, is devastatingly sad. But by the end of the book, her resilience lets her move on to a different phase of her life.
Highly recommended.