Holding Tight, Letting Go: My Life, Death and All the Madness In Between Hardcover – 31 March 2022

I bought this book on its publication day and put it on my to-be-read pile. I had so many other books I either needed or planned to read before it, but it seemed to stare at me, demanding attention. I guess in that it was a bit like Sarah Hughes herself, whom I knew a little from time working together on The Observer, where she said something so filthy and funny at a Christmas party that it has stuck in my mind more than 20 years on and still makes me smile.I am writing this on April 5th 2022 on the first anniversary of Sarah’s death from a breast cancer that spread to her liver. Which is exactly what happened with my own late wife (who hooted with laughter at that filthy and funny anecdote when I told it to her after I got home from that Observer Christmas party). Perhaps that is also why I just had to read this book by and about Sarah, devour it indeed. That and so many similarities between her and Vikki, both sparky, fiercely bright journalists full of fun who gulped life in great draughts, and both taken prematurely in terms of age but who crammed so much into the years they were given.Holding Tight, Letting Go made me laugh and cry at its light and darkness, its warmth and wit. Sarah wrote of her wedding day, on which she wore red shoes and a leopard print stole: “If you can’t channel your inner barmaid on your wedding day, then frankly what’s the point to getting married at all?” And shortly before her death, she wrote: “… the only piece of advice I can honestly give: even in these depressing times, try to find some part of the day that is worth relishing, whether it is a moment of beauty half-glimpsed outside, the joy found in escaping into a different world or screen, or the pleasure of dressing up for yourself and no one else because it makes you feel fine.” Beautiful. And wise.Sarah evoked in me huge depths of admiration for her determination to savour the last days of her life despite her terminal diagnosis and the indignity and brutality of life-extending treatments - told with great realism but without self-pity. Her self-awareness and acceptance of her flaws and excesses is equally admirable and touching. Above all, what comes through is Sarah’s lust for life and her love of her family, husband Kris and their children Ruby and Oisin.Perhaps because I relate to him so much as a grieving widower, I found Kris’s final chapter to the book especially moving and poignant, particularly this that is so real and true: “One of the things that has been brought into sharp focus since her death is that when people use the term ‘other half,’ it really means exactly what it says: the other half of every conversation you want to have is missing; the other half of your bed is empty every morning and every night; there is a hole in the other half of every single event in your children’s lives.”This is a brave book, beautifully written and curated, about life and death for sure. More than that, though, it is about a remarkable woman and humanity in all her and its flawed glory.

Humbling, beautifully written - filled with humour and heartbreak