For most of us, the idea of romantic love has lost hardly any of its allure. It continues to be the focus of our collective fantasies. It is, perhaps, the most essential component of what most people understand happiness to be. But more people live alone now than at any other time in history. People like me. Many of us, willingly or not, have said goodbye to the grand idea of love. Even if some of us still believe in it.
But can you really live a good life alone, without a romantic relationship? How sustainable is a model like that? And how do you learn to live with being alone without it hurting, without lying to yourself? These were the questions that I didn’t know the answers to when I started writing my book, Alone. But I knew that I needed to find them. Some of the answers I found in literature – in a wide array of essays and novels, it turned out. This is a small selection.
