- Lessons in Chemistry - Probably the “it”book of the year and rightly so. It’s so so enjoyable. It’s subversive, significant but also a breeze. The writing is funny and heart wrenching and relatable at the same time. I can sometimes just feel her anger. It deals with a different kind of loneliness - of being a woman in a male-only field, of being a single parent in an era when it was almost unacceptable and the loneliness and isolation of being a clever, competent woman who had a role outside of the home. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I finally understand this. The romance at the beginning of the book is “old romcom” good. I’m savouring the book. I’m almost afraid I’ll finish it too quickly. It’s my favourite this year.
- Diary of a Void - “So this is pregnancy. What luxury. What loneliness”. This is pretty much what the book is all about. The premise is hilarious. A single working woman in Japan doesn’t want to wash dirty coffee cups in the office. She ends up lying that she’s pregnant. Hijinks follow.(I’m joking. nothing much “happens” in the book) Our narrator is the only woman in her department and has additional duties like making coffee, serving said coffee and cleaning coffee cups. Unable to take any more of it, she simply and quite impulsively lies that she’s pregnant and the story takes off from there. The book explores multiple types of isolation - of being a single woman of a certain age, of being the only woman at work in her department, and of being a pregnant and potential single mother.
It is funny, filled with glorious observations that make us think about the privilege and special status that we accord pregnant women (like we actually truly value women only for their ability to carry children) and the isolation of just being a single woman. It’s one of my favourites of last year and I highly recommend it. - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Can a book be about completely “normal” things like working in an office, making friends and maybe even finding some romance but also be completely gut wrenchingly sad and a little bit funny?
The answer is this book. It’s about the utter hopelessness of loneliness and digging yourself out of that - it’s about remembering that we don’t need much, just a little bit, and we don’t need to fight for it, just look for it. - Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness - Our first glimpse at Kristen Radtke’s art and insight was in an FT piece on the art of conversations. This graphic novel weaves in and out of history, anthropology, memoir and sharp insights into the world-as-we-live-in-it. She does an excellent job of establishing the primordial roots of what we know of american loneliness today. There’s a bit on the invention of laugh tracks in Hollywood - I’d re-read this just for that part.
- Earthlings - The same superpower wielded in her earlier novel Convenience Store Woman is unleashed in this novel about alienation from your immediate surroundings. The more pages you read, the more you question what defines ‘normal’ in your universe - and how it got that way. The protagonist refers to her surrounding society as ‘the factory’ - and if you refuse to partake in the production of what the factory wants to produce, you lose the license to exist in it.
Five books on loneliness, and finding a way out
Pair it with our earlier post on the loneliness epidemic
