Dubray Biography of the Year

Shortlist 2025

Still - A Memoir by Julia Kelly

Still – A Memoir

By Julia Kelly

A profoundly affecting memoir of grief that brings its subject to life in an unforgettable and unexpectedly joyous way.

Delphine, long cast in the supporting role of politician’s wife and mother to five children, spends her life tending to others. It’s only after her husband’s sudden death that she begins to live on her own terms – sea-swimming, travelling and embracing long-overdue freedom.

When she dies unexpectedly on a trip to the Galápagos Islands, her daughter Julia is left to make sense of a life that was both ordinary and extraordinary. In the quiet, clinical language of the post-mortem report, she finds an unlikely path to healing.

Piece by piece, she reconstructs her mother – not as the exhausted figure of her childhood, but as a vibrant, complex woman finally free to be herself.

Still is a stunning portrait of grief, transformation and the lasting power of love. A deeply moving tribute to a woman who died as she had always longed to live: in the middle of a great adventure.

About Julia Kelly...

Julia Kelly is an acclaimed Irish memoirist and novelist. Her previous books include Matchstick Man (2018), The Playground (2014) and With My Lazy Eye (2009), for which she was awarded an Irish Book Award and nominated for a Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and Irish Book of the Decade.

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