These are beautifully written essays. Most of them are serious and most of them have a lot of humor too. All of them are interesting and (even when circumstances completely differ) relatable. The writers have different amounts and types of loneliness and aloneness. Very diverse people and stories and yet there is that common thread. Most are not very alone at all but their stories show how one can feel lonely/alone in all sorts of circumstances, for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes for only specific times and situations. The essayists are all impressive people, accomplished and living life fully, and yes they’re published writers for a reason. They’re all fine writers. Usually with these sorts of anthologies the essays are uneven with some much worse or much better than others. In this book I basked in every one of them.

I thought that this would be a good book to read while I read other books once I started reading these essays it was hard to put down this book to also read other books.

Natalie Eve Garrett (Introduction): Great introduction with just enough information to make me eager to read the rest of the included essays. Her story is one of them; it’s not just an introduction to the rest of the book. “And while loneliness can be devastating, I find it deeply moving that it can also function as a portal to beauty and discovery.” I like the quote she quoted at the start from The Book of Delights by Ross Gay: “What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?”

Megan Giddings: What a wonderful perspective to read. “My emotions are valid. Sometimes I can simply look into myself to know the world around me.”

Claire Dederer: Poignant.

Imani Perry: Brutally, painfully honest. I love the literature tie-in.

Jefferey Renard Allen: Excruciatingly sad. Captures well the feeling of having only one parent/one parent left.

Maggie Shipstead: She wasn’t the only essayist who made the point but she did so compellingly: the loneliness of not being believed. I enjoyed what she wrote about the adventures of others including polar explorations and her own adventures and planned adventures. Thought provoking musings about the loneliness of fear of and being close to death. “Maybe the impossibility of perfect togetherness, of perfect understanding, is what makes the search for connection so enticing, the moments of resonance so profound.” and “The connection and closeness we can achieve with another person is finite...”

Emily Raboteau: A pandemic experience in a NYC apartment building that gets more and more vacant due to the pandemic.

Lev Grossman: Pre-internet loneliness! Endearing account of a 22 year old’s opinion of what he needed to do to be a writer. I smiled a lot, even as I was feeling badly for him.

Lena Dunham: A breakup with a live in boyfriend, candidly portrayed. As with most of the other essays love reading about various experiences at different times in life. I got the strep throat story. Ha! “winded from the sheer marathon of putting up with my own mind”

Yiyun Li: Interesting regarding not only writing and using a new language but literally abandoning one’s native language, and about language in general. I was interested in her mental health issues too. “One weeps out of private pain, but only when the audience swarms in and claims understanding and empathy do people call it a tragedy. One’s grief belongs to oneself; one’s tragedy, to others.” “To be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, like a crucial decision.“ “Loneliness is the inability to speak with another in one’s private language. That emptiness is filled with public language or romanticized connections.“ “I have crossed the line, too, from erasing myself to erasing others. I am not the only casualty in this war against myself.”

Anthony Doerr: I giggled my way (in self recognition) through this one. A perspicacious look at iPhone/internet addiction, as an attempt to ward off loneliness. I loved the mentions of Henry David Thoreau and Walden.

Helena Fitzgerald: How it’s a compromise to share a life and a bed when your preference is to be alone. Another only child. Thoughtful words about society and women who are alone.

Maile Maloy: I didn’t see the tie to loneliness or even aloneness here, more the opposite. I get it 100% but surprised that the place went along with this. Sort of sad, in a way.

Aja Gabel: Attachment. The loneliness of a miscarriage and of a pregnancy kept secret for fear of loss and of the loss of a father to cancer.

Jean Kwok: An immigrant experience. Wanting to cry and laughing, sometimes nearly simultaneously. Horrific young child labor in the U.S. age 5 hiding from the inspectors – heartbreaking. The feeling of needing to or actually needing to lie to be oneself and living one’s life. “I had carved myself into slices like a melon and there was no one who saw the entirety of who I was.” “As I became an adult, I slowly realized that after years of hiding who I truly was, I was no longer able to reveal myself.” “… and I became an immigrant for the second time that I realized how much of our identities are reflected back upon us by other people.” “As someone who has been an immigrant twice, I have spent most of my life feeling lonely. In fact, I still do. I often feel slightly out of step with everyone else around me, translating different versions of myself back-and-forth.” “But the heavier price was losing our language, our friends, our culture, and in some ways, one another.”

Amy Shearn: The loneliness of having no free time. Leaving a lonely marriage. I enoyed the mentioned of the 2 famous women walking. “How can I be as purely me as when I was always alone?“ “Then again, I’m uniquely primed to love her story, as it falls into a genre and fascinated by that I guess could be essentially summed up as Women Running Away from Their Lives.”

Peter Ho Davies: From a town where nothing happens. I wasn’t familiar with the phrase “to be sent to Coventry.” Star Trek fandom before it was cool. Being biracial. “It’s the worst loneliness, I think, the loneliness we feel among those we feel we should be most like, most want to be like. Our tribe turns out not to be quite our tribe. To join it or remain a part of it, we have to suppress something of ourselves, to pretend or risk expulsion, which may be worse.“ “I now realize that Star Trek – the original series (TOS to fans), at least – is very much about loneliness and isolation… It’s perhaps that glimmering hope of community… set against the backdrop of cosmic loneliness that explains some of the show’s enduring appeal.“ “Television and books, more generally, often about loneliness… and yet partaking of them individually, privately, and isolation, nonetheless connects us to all those invisible strangers out there for also watching and reading by themselves…paradoxically a balm to my alienation at that convention – may be that we find companionship not with our own..but..with whom all we share is a voyage of loneliness. Which sometimes turns out to be enough.”

Maya Shanbhag Lang: Mother with Alzheimer’s disease. Lost fellowship. Isolation as caregiver. About good outcomes when we take care of ourselves. “How do we negotiate ambiguous loss? My mother is present but absent.“ “This, I think, is the most impressive feature of loneliness, the way it limits the imagination…“

Jhumpa Lahiri: Of belonging and not belonging. Of feeling different. The role of books and of writing and of stories. Owning and not owning books. About the act of writing. “For me, the act of reading was one of discovery in the most basic sense – the discovery of a culture that was foreign to my parents.” “… writing, like reading, was less of solitary pursuit than an attempt to connect with others.“ “My insecurity was systemic, and preemptive, ensuring that, before anyone else had the opportunity, I had already rejected myself.”

Jesmyn Ward: Grief turn to depression husband lost to covid in the early days who was primary caregiver for their children, previous loss brother as young adult lost to drunk driver. Black lives matter. Heart wrenching and righteous indignation.

Lidia Yuknavitch: Dreaded son leaving for college, for years. Her daughter had died the day she was born. Long term grief. Covid pandemic brings son back home.

“Never let anyone tell you how long your grief should last or what to do with it.
I have spent whole decades inside grief.
I have spent whole decades inside an alone, whether or not there were any people around.”

Dina Nayeri: An immigration story, a success story. Princeton Iowa Writers Workshop. But dark secret corners. “I can have friends when the footing is equal, but no one is doing anything favors, when there is no pity to be felt.“

Melissa Febos: Choice to be celibate for a period of time. Being a friend to oneself. Lonely but “an essential aloneness.” “I had mistaken it for a problem to be fixed, but this kind of aloneness is not the symptom of a deficit, or a loss. No matter how we grasp at other people…we are still alone with ourselves.

I know that some of these stories sound depressing, and at times some of them are, but overall, they are not at all. These people have come through. All have survived their experiences and have accomplished much and have thrived.

I read a Kindle e-edition borrowed from the library because I could get it faster than the hardcover edition. An advantage of a paper edition would have been that I would have turned the pages and read each author’s mini bio as I read their essay. They’re all in the back and I read them at the end because e-books as a bit of a pain.

5 full stars. ( )