In this book, every chapter is built according to Joni Mitchell’s album Blue, with each song inducing an echo with chapters of Amy Key’s life. Having imagined romantic love as a prerequisite for a good life, Key, now over 40 and without this romantic love, reflects on what this all means. What she feels about it, asking herself if she is normal, what others impose on her as a single childless woman, sadness, shame, resentfulness. The narrative goes through a bouquet of emotions, often close to self-pity, but this book should be praised for its honesty and openness about feelings and for the wonderful flow of words.
“Here I am again in a panic about my raw soul, alienated and ready to take up arms for a failing it’s possible that only I am paying attention to. Over and over, it is revealed to me that my idea of my life being partial – because romantic love has not yet rounded it out by pairing me to another – is not because I experience life as partial, but because I tell myself others believe I must. Or I am too ready to believe it when they do. What is that, my vanity speaking? It can seem so. But when that anxiety falls away, when hurt retreats, it becomes clear to me how often my soul meets another’s. I’ve felt it rise to the surface of my body, so that my body has been aglow with it. The occasions that have created that response have been so various – vulnerability, illness, shame, pleasure, community, art. In these states of soulful receptiveness – the giving and receiving of spirit – I’m never a status as drab and suggestive as being single.”
Listened to as an audiobook