Dancing with the Octopus: The Telling of a True Crime

Review A searing literary work that will help many of us see trauma in a different light. In strong and powerful prose Debora Harding shows us what it means to move forward through grief. -- Julia Samuel, author of ― This Too Shall PassDancing with the Octopus is a brave and authentic picture of the tailwinds of trauma, the limits of human forgiveness and what it takes to maintain hope in a world bent on breaking us. Highly readable, and deeply moving. -- Rachel Louise Snyder, award-winning author of ― No Visible BruisesA gripping account of one woman's confrontation with the terror and heartbreak of her past. Harding combines true crime and family saga to illustrate the aftershocks of trauma, and the courage, tenderness, and humor that recovery requires. -- Melissa Febos, author of ― Abandon MeDebora Harding writes with a stunningly original mixture of insight, wit, and humanity about a life packed with so much drama, loss and resilience that you can't believe its not an epic work of fiction. -- Kate Weinberg, author of ― The TruantsExtraordinary, so powerful and like nothing I've read. Astonishing book. It deserves to be the most massive hit. -- Kate MosseI have just finished reading Dancing with the Octopus... You are lucky! The electricity of this true crime memoir awaits you. -- Lemn Sissay (via Twitter)Debora Harding's book is a beautiful and exacting monument to resilience and recovery -- Jessamy Calkin ― Daily Telegraph Published On: 2020-08-22It's as gripping as any thriller and as moving as any novel you're ever likely to read. -- Paul Chahidi (via Twitter) Published On: 2020-08-24Incredible ... a memoir like few others ... seek it out -- Jane Garvey ― Woman's Hour Published On: 2020-09-07Darkly humorous . . . Harding draws a complex web of interlinked experiences to show how suffering can set up shop for good in a family and a town ― CrimeReads - Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020Gripping ... written with such a light touch that you are drawn in straight away from the moment you open it -- Jeremy Vine ― BBC Radio 2A sharp, compelling recollection of abuse, gaslighting, and the process of trauma... Ultimately, Dancing with the Octopus is a book about telling and the power of retelling-an act carried out with wit, grace, and humour by an author of her own narrative truth ― Cambridge Review of Books Product Description *SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION*'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse'Electric' Lemn Sissay'Searing' Julia SamuelOne Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery. Book Description A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society About the Author DEBORA HARDING spent her childhood in the Midwestern prairie states of Nebraska and Iowa. At the age of nineteen she dropped out of university to work for Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaign,before relocating to Washington, D.C., to run an environmental non-profit. Fed up with politics, she cycled across America where she met her English husband, author Thomas Harding. She then joined him in the UK and worked at an award-winning video production company that focused on the counter-culture protest movement in Europe. Later, she co-founded the UK's first local television station in Oxford and ga