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Busy Being Free

Starting Again on Your Own

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Busy Being Free

By: Emma Forrest
Narrated by: Indira Varma
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Summary

 'Beautiful' Nigella Lawson
'I adored it' Dolly Alderton
'Wonderful' Lisa Taddeo
'Intoxicating' Abi Morgan

What happens when your story doesn't end the way you thought it would?

When you realise - after getting married and having a baby - that you chose wrong?

When the life you dreamt of becomes something you must walk away from?

And when you then find yourself not lonely, but elated - elated to be alone with yourself? Divorce & Separation Parenting & Families Personal Development Personal Success Relationships Single Parents Single Parent
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Critic reviews

A staggering piece of writing: I had to start it again the minute I finished reading it, and it was just as shocking, absorbing and beautiful on rereading (Nigella Lawson)
Compelling, mystical, deeply moving, darkly funny. Busy Being Free is a poetic, incisive, uncensored study of female solitude. I adored it.
Alluring, shocking, welcome and wonderful (Lisa Taddeo, author of THREE WOMEN)
The most delicious memoir that kept me in bed all day. I wonder what it is like to live with a mind like Forrest's, which makes such shooting connections between things and sees a great pattern in it all. I think she might be a genius. Eve Babitz didn't die, she just regenerated as Emma Forrest (Sophie Heawood, author of THE HUNGOVER GAMES)
I've really never read about sex and been so sharply reminded about how much it is tied up with the fundamentals of being a woman. This deep part of ourselves that somehow gets side-lined and subordinated by everything else. This ecstatic voice we so often manage to ignore. I can hear Emma's voice though, and it's woken me up (Minnie Driver, author of Managing Expectations)
Busy Being Free utterly thrilled me with its exposition of loneliness, solitude, and the differences between the two.
How wonderful to be privy to many sides of a marriage and what comes after it, how wonderful to be shown so vividly that the end of a formal relationship is not the end of life nor even the end of that particular love. Emma Forrest is a master of voicing those human instincts and thoughts which feel too murky or ingrained to be articulated, and yet here she is doing so with enviable elegance on every page (Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation)
A heart-rending and acerbic memoir of appetite and abstinence (Polly Samson, author of A Theatre for Dreamers)
Emma Forrest can write the hell out of anything but where she truly excels is when she's writing about her life, which is often like something out of a novel... A glorious, sharp-as-a-tack-but-full-of-soul exploration of heartbreak and what happens next. (Sarra Manning)
Her writing hums with life, honesty and intelligence and underneath the romance and red carpets is loneliness and vulnerability. (Marianne Power)
Forrest is examining, with an unflinching eye and a formidable cultural frame of reference... what it means for a woman to find herself alone in her 40s and to redefine herself outside a context of marriage, motherhood and men... One of Forrest's greatest gifts as a writer - apart from her humour; like its predecessor, Busy Being Free is frequently hilarious - is her instinct for ambiguity. She writes so well about messy lives because she understands the contradictions we are all prone to... the fact that she has written about this mid life excavation with such ferocity and frankness is cause for celebration. (Stephanie Merritt)
All stars
Most relevant
Not the sort of book I would normally pick to listen to on here (middle aged divorced man with interests in sport and comedy) but after reading a review in the paper decided to give it a go. Made for a lovely listen and consumed the entire book on one Saturday. Great work Emma.

Great listen

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A bit more visceral than expected, and not my experience personally. Glad to have purchased though as it’s been on my “you might also like” wherever I go!

Not what I expected

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I am so grateful that Emma Forrest has shared her story, her honesty is refreshing and liberating. Indira Varma reads it beautifully and sensitively (and she is really good at accents)

I did not want it to end

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but as other people's dreams are boring so are their sex lives. I found the glimpses of why EF's marriage broke up the most interesting part. Stuff about her clothes and her sex life I found initially quite dull, and then irritating - I'm prepared to accept I am envious though.

Good in parts...

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I must have over 300 books in my audible library, and this is one of the best I’ve ever read. I had no expectations and knew nothing about the author, as her story unfolds, the crushing honesty, beautiful writing and wicked humour captivated me like no book before. I can honestly say I’ve read nothing like it. Hugely relatable, The author make me cry and laugh with her stories. Don’t hesitate to listen

STUNNING! One of the best books I’ve ever read.

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