Julia Kelly’s mother, Delphine, spent much of her life in the shadows as a politician’s wife, tending selflessly to the needs of her husband, John, and five wild children. Rattling around in a draughty house, the siblings – though much-loved – are left largely to their own devices, tended to by a series of hapless au-pairs, dodging mouse invasions and forever in search of their exhausted mother’s attention.

When John collapses of a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine, it is a sad liberation for his wife. Unshackled from her domestic duties, Delphine undergoes a transformation. She embraces sea-swimming and, along with a coterie of elderly ladies, sets out on adventures to far-flung places. Her final journey is to the Galapagos Islands where, hit by an unexpected wave, she loses her balance and is forced underwater. When her body surfaces she is no longer breathing. The book left on her bedside locker in the hotel is 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

Mired in grief, the five siblings begin the long repatriation of their mother’s body. But it is the post-mortem report that provides the key to Julia’s healing and recovery: gradually, within the clinical descriptions of limbs and eyes, heart and toes, Julia finds solace. Taking inspiration from each body part, she breathes life into Delphine – finally still and fully present for the first time in her seventy-two years – in gorgeous, luminous prose.

What leaps from the pages of STILL is someone unforgettable: a vibrant, complex woman, whose endless capacity for love continues to inspire and comfort. In the end, she died as she had always strived to live: in the middle of a huge adventure, diving into the great unknown.

Praise for ‘Still’

"In ‘Still’, Julia Kelly has written a painful, intimate, and brilliantly compelling memoir about what it means to have, and lose, a mother. I can't imagine anyone who won't find their own experiences and emotions about family life and loss beautifully and movingly spoken for them in this swift, compassionate, sharp-eyed book."

Kevin Power (author of Bad Day at Blackrock)

"Taking the brutal medical phrasing of her mother's autopsy report, Julia Kelly uses the tools of her own trade to fashion an alternative portrait. A daughter's tender recollection is the means of breathing life into her mother again. The book is an act of love, showing the power of memory to soften the harsh realities of death."

Kathleen McMahon

"Shocked into grief by the tragic loss of her mother Delphine, Julia Kelly immerses herself in memories of their shared past. In the intimate, powerful monologue-to-her mother that results from that memory work, the writer performs a kind of miracle: Delphine’s voice and person emerge so that she becomes not a lost subject, not merely a harried housewife and busy, beloved mother, but a voracious reader, an independent traveller, and a woman who will remain with her daughter forever in gesture, glance, and phrase. This delicate account of grief and love testifies to the persistence of memory, and the ways even in loss we find ways to retain connection."

Oona Frawley