- Published: 15 June 2018
- ISBN: 9781784705466
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 224
- RRP: $24.99
I Found My Tribe
- Published: 15 June 2018
- ISBN: 9781784705466
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 224
- RRP: $24.99
Ruth Fitzmaurice's beautiful book is an enraptured cry at life's gifts and griefs ... Life-affirming and full of love, this book is a clarion call to live life to the full: to dive in for a swim and be brave
Book of the Month, Psychologies Magazine
A vivid and beautifully written work, that chronicles a life of joy and frustration and coping and celebration and swimming against the tide and all those points in between
RTE Guide
One of the year’s most arresting, humbling and acute memoirs. It is a catch-in-the-throat, life-affirming work that you want to gulp down in one and recommend to all your friends. Fitzmaurice tells her story in sparkling prose that is as sinewy as her new sea-strengthened body, and as admirable and boundless as her spirit
Helen Davies, The Sunday Times
This debut is set to become a global bestseller -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly meets Calendar Girls, with a splash of Roger Deakin. It is one of a number of recent books by women riding the crest of a wild-swimming wave. Fitzmaurice's memoir, though, is likely to be the one that exerts the greatest tidal pull
Helen Davies, The Sunday Times
A powerful, emotional, poetic, funny, philosophical and courageous work of art ... a joyful, raw, urgent invitation to her readers to 'just dive' -- into the sea, and into life. Dive in, she urges, no matter what horrors life flings your way
Irish Times
Fitzmaurice's brilliantly lyrical ear and gentle humour makes this a none-too-distant relative to the likes of Joan Didion and Cheryl Strayed
Irish Independent
Uplifting and life-affirming, this is a manifesto to live as hard and as well as you can
Stylist
Deceptively simple prose, laced with clever imagery, emotional complexity and heart
Róisín Ingle, Irish Times
A moving memoir of family life, coping with her husband's motor neurone disease and the icy joys of wild sea swimming
Best Non-Fiction, Good Housekeeping
She has managed to distil emotional hardship against a mundanely challenging domestic backdrop into something full-bodied and, at times, gorgeously spirited without ever seeming to force either the sincerity of her voice or her clippy, musical style
Hilary A White, Irish Independent
Fitzmaurice’s book is as poetic as it is devastating, exploring thoughts of suicide and murder at the same time as being life-affirming and even occasionally funny. It is a love letter to her husband, an homage to the sea and a tribute to the power of friendship of one woman’s fortitude in the face of a cruel fate
Verena Vogt, Yorkshire Post
An inspiring and beautifully written account of family life through a serious illness
Today FM
I Found My Tribe is written with such lightness of touch that it’s life-affirming, powerfully so. Yes, sometimes I was breathless from stabs of pain, but this book reads almost like poetry. In beguiling, luminous words Ruth tells her story in a seemingly scattergun way… as the overall picture builds up like a mosaic made from shiny beautiful things… I Found My Tribe is inspiring, humbling and a picture of what love really looks like. An astonishingly beautiful book by an astonishingly beautiful person
Marian Keyes
Lyrical and moving
Economist
Ruth Fitzmaurice’s crazy, joyful, heartbreaking, romantic, raw and honest memoir is a work of art made from the heart. It swells with great love, high drama as well as hijinks, deep sadness and raw emotion… Sprinkling magic and stardust in prose that is far from sentimental, not afraid to confront the real and the raw
Donal O'Donoghue, RTE Guide
A beautiful and often times devastating tribute to her family, her friends and the healing power of nature
Irish Country Living
Moving… If you love a triumph-over-adversity real life tale, Ruth is your gal
Muddy Stilettos
An exceptional and beautifully written book about how love - changed but yet unchanged - friendship, frustration, deep despair and delight, can all be experienced in the same day...If you buy one book this summer, make it this one
Irish Times
Absolutely brilliant… I highly recommend it – inspirational
Sean O'Rourke, Today with Sean O'Rourke
Uplifting and inspiring
Woman & Home
As poetic as it is devastating
i
Like the sea, the writing in this terrific debut is both bracing and beautiful
Bookseller
Like the Irish sea that laps the coast at Greystones, Co Wicklow, this extraordinary, beautifully written book ebbs and flows with love amid the crises of daily life… It’s a powerful, memorable and life-affirming read
Choice
A heartbreaking work of shimmering beauty that charts her own place in the world… As astounding as it is inspirational
Donal O'Donoghue, RTE Guide
This is far from a desperate tale and a plea for pity. It is an often uplifting and funny account of learning to dealing with hardship and how resilient and adaptable we can be in testing times
Jude Brosnan, Wanderlust Travel Magazine
A true-to-the-bone and life affirming account of her life with a husband with MND, 5 young kids and her addiction to swimming in the Irish sea every day
Al Porter, Today FM
Her beautiful, sparse prose gets to the very essence of what is happening with the various tribes. It is a moving book too, with several poignant moments. She is one tough lady
Paul Cheney, Nudge
If ever there was a lesson in living the fullest, most passionate life you can, this is it! I Found My Tribe is one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read. Living with her husband Simon, who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease and her five children, Ruth Fitzmaurice writes so honestly and vividly about her family's life that you will think about the Fitzmaurice's long after you have turned the final page. It is beautifully written with clever descriptions and vivid imagery that will take your breath away. Writing to the background noise of Simon's medical machines, twenty four hour carers and five children, Ruth candidly writes about her life as she navigates various different themes including grief, friendship and love and the strength she has in the face of adversity… I found my tribe is an uplifting powerful memoir that will make you laugh and cry in equal measures. I urge everyone to read it
Adele O'Neill, Irish Independent
Beautiful…There is huge passion in Fitzmaurice’s writing.
Sophie White, Image Magazine
A surprisingly uplifting read
Arifa Akbar, Observer