'Very touching and very helpful to anyone in the same situation' Dame Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Illustrated Mum and Think Again

At 50, Sophie Calon’s father was a high-flying lawyer. At 55, he was found dead in Cardiff city centre at Christmas. Meanwhile he had pinballed between tents, homeless shelters, and prison cells. His story is a lesson in how alcoholism can consume a person – and a family.

Long Going is a powerful, unflinching memoir that sings with Calon’s love for her eccentric, witty father while recounting his drink-fuelled disintegration. In telling his story, Calon explores her family’s instability and pain as well as her own survival.

'A moving and thought-provoking account of an impossible situation' Louis de Bernieres

‘Calon paints a clear-eyed portrait of her dad, neither blaming him nor letting him off the hook. She raises compelling questions about the give and take between parents and children. For thirty years, her dad, who grew up poor, treaded water as a lawyer in a boring job he hated. She recalls: ‘One weeknight, there was a thunderstorm and he ran laps of the garden, whooping. We steered clear of asking, “How was work?”’ Towards the end of his life, he is anguished by his children’s perceived abandonment of him after he has worked so hard to provide them with everything. Calon questions whether the daily grind fed into his drinking. There are no easy answers. Calon writes in short paragraphs tightly packed with achingly specific details. Her narrative is littered with fragments of other texts: letters, emails and birthday cards from her dad,lists, resolutions and scattered reflections from his notebooks, text messages and emails from other family members, bills from lawyers, official prison papers. She traces the web of desperation that weaves itself around an addict, showing how addiction has shaped her family’s collective life. In some ways, her dad died unredeemed, but Calon’s reproduction of his writings places his witty, charming, unstable voice at the centre of her memoir and grants him the dignity of full, unsanctified representation. Reading the ending, I sobbed.’ Tida Coleman, Literary Review

Maeve McClenaghan, author of No Fixed Abode, says: 'Searing and poetic, Sophie Calon's prose sparkles in this elegiac, gripping memoir. By piecing together fragments of his writing, Calon poignantly charts her father's gradual slip into homelessness. This painfully personal tale explores the complex, knotty truths of loving someone drowning in addiction. Long Going draws you in and takes you on a journey. Calon is an immensely readable writer to watch.'

Gwyneth Lewis, author of Nightshade Mother and Sunbathing in the Rain, says: 'Sophie Canon’s heartbreaking portrait of her alcoholic father combines a clarity about the selfishness of addiction with a deeply loving portrait of a generous, energetic and joyful person. It’s also a vivid portrait of growing up in Cardiff. This portrait pulls no punches but is, at the same time, profoundly life-affirming. Everyone who has an alcoholic in the family should read this book for its compassionate awareness of the damage and chaos caused by addiction, while never forgetting the humanity of the person caught in that trap. A wonderful book.'

James Canton, author of Grounded and Director of the Wild Writing MA at the University of Essex, says of it: ‘Hugely impacting and searingly honest, Sophie Calon's work is a powerful piece of memoir: bold, bruising and yet beautiful. A delight.’

Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth and Saltwater, says: 'Sophie Calon’s writing is deeply real and moving – she is a talent to watch.'