#6 - Heartbreak
Books to read when you've been dumped
Ahh, Valentine’s Day. It peaked in secondary school when you could send your friends a kissogram from the cute sixth former, and you received handmade cards from an ‘anonymous’ sender whom you knew to be Douglas from Maths. These days it’s over-commercialised, and nobody seems to have crushes anymore, and I’m more interested in writing a themed reading list exploring the exquisite pain of heartbreak instead.
There’s nothing quite like it - it’s up there as the most memorable of life’s experiences, especially the first time. In the 19th century there was a real danger of dying from it. But it’s also well known that the fallow period that follows heartbreak - the pain, the loss of appetite, the yearning - can yield the most amazing period of growth. I’ve often looked back in awe at what I’ve achieved during those periods of heartbreak, running on some sort of jacked-up ‘I’ll show him what he’s missing’ adrenaline.
First up on this list is an essential book every doctor in the NHS should prescribe for all who are newly single. Many might recognise psychologist Dr Jillian Turecki from Instagram, where in stylish spectacles with an impeccably cut fringe, she soothingly and calmly talks you through modern dating dilemmas, like why you’re always drawn to the same avoidant type in men. Never condescending, grounded in psychology, and miles away from the woo woo wellness craze of ‘manifesting’ a relationship, as though we need to be witches wielding black magic to land a man in this day and age (I assure you, men are not at home setting fire to pages from a diary to lure their soulmate).
In Turecki’s first book, It Begins With You: The 9 Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life, she gets into the root of the work we must do as individuals in order to ‘get our house in order’ post break-up, in order to get us to a place where we’re open and receptive to a relationship that will nourish us. I found her writing so engaging, and it’s the sort of book I wish I’d had years ago in my early twenties, when I was looking at romantic relationships with completely the wrong set of values. I’ll be pressing my lovely proof copy from health & wellbeing publisher extraordinaire Jess Duffy onto all my single friends.
I’m tempted to recommend another Nora Ephron next (the queen of heartbreak!) but I’ve already done her so I’m going to recommend Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss (currently £2.99 on Kindle!) as my favourite book about heartbreak instead. Nothing bad has ever happened to Martha Friel, a woman who is beautiful and intelligent, and loved by her husband Patrick. Until they get a divorce. The book tracks through the period leading up to the breakdown of their ill-fated marriage (Martha appears to unravel from the sheer boredom of moving to suburban Oxford). However, this goes a little deeper, and it’s a delicately written novel on the subject of depression and ill mental health in an outwardly perfect young woman. Patrick adores her, but with heartbreaking clarity, you witness first hand the hacking away of their love bond, resulting in a devastating scene where the estranged pair are reunited in a storage unit, picking over the pieces of their destroyed marriage. I cried heaps on a beach while finishing this one.
Not all heartbreak is the result of a man, or woman, you love romantically not loving you back. I’ve experienced soul crushing heartbreak after being hurt and dumped by a childhood friend. You go through something akin to grief as you try to piece together whose fault it was; what you shouldn’t have said, questioning the truth of things they dared to say to you. This is beautifully drawn in my favourite ever series My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. The two best friends, Lila and Elena, are friends from childhood and across four amazing books tracks their friendship through its rifts and waves as they grow from girls to young women to middle aged mothers. At one stage, Lila betrays Elena by stealing the boy she loves, a rift that cuts deep - but somehow, the lengthy period where the two women are separated, and the moment when, upon finding her, Lila rejects Elena and throws their hand-crafted children’s book into a fire is far more painful. Nobody has the power to hurt the other more than the two old friends - they go through their whole lives seeking the validation of the other, above all.
As Young As This by Roxy Dunn is an incredibly good love story told in a series of boyfriends and break ups. It also looks at the unique pain of handling fertility challenges, and the prospect, as a woman, of a life without children. Beautifully written, this is a stunning debut that moved me to tears - I needed a minute after the chapter where the protagonist is reunited with her partner, falls pregnant and is deeply in love, for the reader to be yanked out at the end and learn it’s a fantasy. The challenges brought on by his unwillingness to commit, wasting precious time which exacerbates her fertility challenges, is a unique and specific heartbreak.
Oh no - after all that heart wrenching destruction, we need a funny one. So I call on Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding’s genius creation, who had so many words of wisdom on heartbreak. In the book Mad About the Boy, out in cinemas this week, Fielding references the loss of her own husband through the death of Bridget’s Mark Darcy. My favourite however is book one, where we first meet Bridge, who immortalised forever my ten-year job title of book publicist for all of us who came after her (permanently fannying about with the press releases).
I’ll leave you with this time-honoured Bridget wisdom, that will get you through those lowest moments of heartbreak agony:
“9p.m. My flat. Feel very strange and empty. Is all very well thinking everything is going to be different when you come back but then it is all the same. Suppose I have to make it different. But what am I going to do with my life?
I know. Will eat some cheese.”
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
Which books have cured you from heartbreak?