Notes on Heartbreak: From Vogue’s Dating Columnist, the must-read book on love and letting go

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Annie scatters in a few references to other literary works, like bell hooks’ all about love, or Plato’s theory on love and soulmates, and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, but nothing feels forced or clunky. The intellectual references perfectly blend in to the writing, which actually seems really difficult to achieve but Annie made it look easy. Sometimes that kind of shift in tone could dangerously fall into coming across like two different essays that have been copy and pasted together, but Annie completely avoids this, with every reference feeling useful and adding to the writing. It wasn’t just a ‘look how many clever books I’ve read and can insert here!!!’ I feel like I learnt a lot about love that I didn’t consider before. I was 25 when my ex-boyfriend ended our five-year relationship outside King’s Cross station in London. It was a normal evening; we’d just been for a pint with my brother, and as we set off for the tube, my ex pulled me aside and said, “I want to be on my own.” At first I thought he was joking, and then I thought he was telling me he was moving out of our flat. The idea of him actually leaving me felt like an impossibility. Dark, fierce and raw, Notes on Heartbreak is a love story told in reverse, starting with a devastating and unexpected break-up.

Barely pausing for breath, the woman talked on, about her ex’s new girlfriend, how his friends were all surprised he’d moved on so fast. “His friends know I made him really happy, they don’t understand why he’s with her, she doesn’t make him happy and everyone can see that.” Then she paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to keep going on about it, am I boring you?” she asked her friend. “No!” her friend exclaimed. “Tell me every single detail.” And the young woman and her friend carried on, forensically analysing the break-up. This stunning exploration of love and heartbreak from cult journalist and Vogue columnist Annie Lord, is so much more than a book about one singular break-up. it is an unflinchingly honest yet lyrical meditation on the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. It's a book about the best and worst of love: the euphoric and the painful, the beautiful and the messy. Dark, fierce and raw, Notes on Heartbreak is a love story told in reverse, starting with a devastating break-up. An unflinching and raw exploration of a relationship and its ending, taking in all the joy, pain and messiness of being in love * SHEERLUXE *Vogue dating columnist Annie Lord's debut, Notes on Heartbreak, is a visceral yet funny recollection of the breakdown of her five-year-relationship, told in her distinctive, lyrical style . . . I t's difficult to write about experiences as complex as love and heartbreak without sounding either cheesy or melodramatic, but somehow, Lord nails it. Anyone who's ever been unceremoniously dumped will find themselves furiously underlining the book's most resonant passages * The Best Books of 2022 - DAZED *

There will always be things only your ex would get, such as how typical it is that your parents have rearranged the living room so it “feels more open” even though now none of the sofas point towards the TV. You could try telling them but, for the third time, you will just end up sleeping together.Broken heart syndrome’ can cause the heart’s left ventricle to change shape and get larger, weakening its muscle, meaning it doesn’t pump blood as well as it should Self-love sounds wank, and a lot of it is. But I understand now that it’s not just a way for skincare companies to sell you sheet masks. Prioritise your own pleasure. Make intricate meals that involve laborious steps. Know you’re worth the time to make that meal even if it’s eaten in minutes. Light candles before you masturbate even if it makes you feel weird, and spend ages doing it rather than just shuddering away at the end of a vibrator. Spend whole days in bed reading, not answering your phone, because – let’s be honest – you’re probably not that capable in a crisis anyway. Spend hours making things that you could buy cheaply, like scented candles, cushions and pesto. Do things for yourself that you normally do only for other people. Be kind to yourself in all these hundreds and thousands of ways and all those cliches about loving yourself will start to feel true.

Although I haven’t experienced the breakdown of a long term (five year) relationship, I found it really interesting to understand a different experience to mine. I loved hearing how their romance built at university, flirting in libraries and skipping lectures just to be together. It’s the type of romance I always daydreamed about, but never experienced, and I actually loved being inside that world for a little bit. The way Annie talks about Joe is beautiful and made me tear up in public a few times, coming across like both a love letter to him and then herself. I found myself welling up as she discussed their inside jokes, and how they crafted a language that only they both understood. I also think it’s wonderful how despite initiating the breakup, Annie really humanises Joe and doesn’t make him a villain we’re supposed to dislike. I actually found myself falling a bit in love with both of them, and I could see how they meshed together so well. I was really happy when it seemed like they both felt happy and healed at the end, managing to maintain a friendship. I learned that you will, like everyone told you, be OK. When you speak to people going through breakups, repeat that same phrase to them: you will be OK. Don’t repeat any of the other lessons you’ve learned, because they won’t listen. They’ll just end up sleeping with their ex again. Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.Writing about break-ups can be difficult because they’re so universal, but also deeply subjective. Your world might feel as though it’s collapsing, but to the next person, it’s just another break-up. If one person knows how to write about modern relationships and heartbreak though, it’s Annie Lord, Vogue columnist, VICE writer and now author of Notes On Heartbreak, her debut book, out today. She writes about intimacy in a way that’s relatable, poetic and makes you think that maybe your own heartbreaks are really as quietly earth-shattering as you thought they were.

She writes about intimacy in a way that's relatable, poetic and makes you think that maybe your own heartbreaks are really as quietly earth-shattering as you thought they were... it's a sparkling and deliciously indulgent read which gets right into your chest and stays with you afterwards. It's someone else's story, but it will make you think about your own.' - VICE She doesn’t feel she has written an instruction manual, “there’s no advice you can really give”. But she hopes her experience might help the heartbroken know their feelings are legitimate. She lists the phases she went through such as not being able to get out of bed, eating too little — she pined for him so hard she lost the belly fat that her ex used to love — or annoying friends by going on about her ex all the time. “I’d like people to know that’s all okay,” she says. “By the three-month mark, you’ll probably feel more human. In a year you’ll probably not think about it all the time. It’s such a long process but I’m glad I went through it, because while it’s intensely painful, you go through such an insane amount of growth in such a short period.” A book on love and loss to get the emotions (read: tears) flowing. One of this summer's most anticipated books' - BustleThis stunning exploration of love and heartbreak from cult journalist and Vogue columnist Annie Lord, is so much more than a book about one singular break-up. It is an unflinchingly honest account of the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. Even during the most painful times, there will be good days. You will still have fun. There will be mornings when you’ll wake up and not everything will feel like crap. Eventually, shafts of light will shine through — Annie Lord 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 evervone's always laughing a little bit.” When I read these words by Annie Lord last year, I didn't believe her. Heartbreak makes us selfish, inward-looking creatures who believe that our pain is so large, surely no one else had ever felt this way before, and surely there is no way out. There have been hundreds of studies into the beginnings of love, but why has it taken so long for scientists to investigate its end, this “clinically awful” state? “Science has become more sophisticated at looking at transcription factors in our genome,” says writer Florence Williams. “We are used to relegating heartbreak to cultural melodrama, like popular songs and romantic poetry. But heartbreak isn’t just melodrama. It’s one of the most painful life experiences we have and we need to take it seriously for our mental and physical health.” When Williams’s husband left her after 25 years, she felt “imperilled”. She was plodding through her days, managing to feed her kids and occasionally meet her deadlines as a science journalist, but constantly falling ill, getting thin, unable to sleep. At 50, she’d never experienced anything like it, this “disorienting sorrow, shame and peril”. Not only did she want to figure out what heartbreak was doing to her body, she wanted to work out how to get better. Would she be among the 15% of people who don’t recover after a major breakup? She set to work.