'The natural world is a mutable reality,defined first and foremost by its softness.'

 

In this deftly woven work of memoir, Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother's house,a marriage counsellor's office, the tip, and New World.

 

She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry, and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, as well as everything unsaid about grief, mental illness, or even love. Most importantly, she asks, how do you write about a life honestly - when there are so many flaws in the way we record history and, more confrontingly, in the way we remember?

 

Bad Archive is a lucid, continually surprising, funny and at times bracingly personal essay collection by the winner of the Letteri Family Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 2021.