Annie Lord

Fierce, funny and raw, this unflinchingly honest exploration of heartbreak is so much more than a book about one single break-up

'Arresting and vivid, raw and breathtaking...told with stunning originality.' Dolly Alderton

'Painful while it sloughs away the dead romantic ideals, leaving you cleansed, reborn and gorgeously satisfied.' Pandora Sykes

'A beautiful tender messy brilliant generous open-hearted book.' Emma Gannon

This is a love story told in reverse. It's about the best and worst of love: the euphoric and the painful. The beautiful and the messy.

Reeling from a broken heart, Annie Lord revisits the past - from the moment she first fell in love, the shared in-jokes and intertwining of a long-term relationship, to the months that saw the slow erosion of a bond five years in the making.

It is an unflinchingly honest reminder of the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone that has ever nursed a broken heart.

'An electrifying debut.' Caroline O'Donoghue

'Annie Lord tells us a story at once both specific and universal.' Shon Faye

Notes on Heartbreak

Kristina Bonitz

I know, he says, and for a moment I think about how lucky I am to have people who love me so much they will let me hate them just in case it helps.

But more than curating my own space, I want to be free to be messy in it too. To see myself as so important that the place I live comes second to it. 

It makes me think about something my mum always says, which is that her favorite thing about women is their ability to chat. Everything roams and spirals, turns down unexpected corners. 

Men say women aren't funny and I think that's because they need a badum-bum-tish punchline; they don't see that the humour is riddled through everything we say, so that everyone's always laughing a little bit. Most of the time we talk through the language of experiences, a few too many of them painful, and we find our way to those hurts and tug them out of each other, like following the trail of a map we didn’t know was already inside us. 

I feel so powerless, not being able to check on him, like when you’re small and someone stretches out their arm and puts their palm on your head so that when you try to fight them you can’t reach far enough to hit them with your arms. 

Notes on Heartbreak quotes

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