Powerful Memoirs by Powerful Women

A British journalist who describes herself as "immensely nosey and often quite prurient," Decca Aitkenhead found herself a focus of media attention when her partner, Tony—an ebullient, charismatic reformed drug dealer—drowned on vacation in Jamaica after rescuing their older son. Aitkenhead could easily have written a maudlin memoir about how a liberal and a lowlife found each other, how mixed-race Tony handily won over her shocked white middle-class family, how his death made her strong. And there is, in truth, a whiff of that sentimentality here. But Aitkenhead also owns up to being, like Tony, a "class refugee" who made lots of mistakes, and still can't understand her lack of panic when she saw him floundering. Other confessions border on the risky, such as when she admits after his death that she was smitten with "the celebrity of tragedy." Admittedly ambitious and self-serving, Aitkenhead is also whip-smart and full of life. You may not love her, but you'd jump at her party invitation—her company is that good.