Most people experience heartbreak at least once. Some of us, the lucky ones, go through it multiple times, as if it were an extreme sport. But you also learn a lot about yourself in the process, and almost always end up grateful it happened.
When you’re in the thick of it, though, romantic movies, books, and TV shows can make you feel sick. So, for this Valentine’s Day, here’s a list of the best books to read if you don’t want to think about happily-in-love people—from bitter divorce memoirs to vivid explorations of enjoying the single life.
Strangers by Belle Burden
At what point does a happy marriage turn into an ugly divorce? If we examined every stage of a couple’s life together, when would we see things start to sour? This is what Belle Burden tackles in her marriage memoir, Strangers, where she digs into her former “picture-perfect” relationship to understand why her husband suddenly wanted to leave after 20 years. It’s a great book for the nosy and curious, and for anyone blindsided by a divorce or breakup. Originally a viral Modern Love essay in the New York Times, Strangers is also beautifully written.
All Fours by Miranda July
If you made it through the first half of the 2020s without someone asking, “Have you read All Fours by Miranda July?!” then well done. If not… have you read it? And if the answer is no, then why not? More a story of self-discovery than strictly about heartbreak, All Fours is a delightfully oddball account of one woman leaning headfirst into her sexuality—and, more broadly, what it means to be alive—during perimenopause. The actual breakup is just a footnote in this tale of exploration, motel renovations, inappropriate crushes, and very weird sex. July pushes auto-fiction to new limits here.
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing has written engrossingly on everything from the whiskey-ravaged livers of John Cheever and Raymond Carver to the pastel abstractions of Agnes Martin, and from the medlars and magnolias in her Suffolk garden to the midcentury craze for Wilhelm Reich’s “orgone.” Her 2016 work The Lonely City is a 50/50 blend of memoir and criticism, studying isolation and its shame—written after falling “headlong and too precipitously” into a relationship whose sudden end left her in emotional free fall (and bouncing between sublets across New York City). “There were things that burned away at me, not only as a private individual, but also as a citizen of our century, our pixelated age,” she writes. “What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if not intimately engaged with another human being?” Contemplating the works of Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, and Henry Darger, she finds her answer.
I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol
At 46, after a year and a half isolating in her Manhattan studio during COVID-19’s peak, Glynnis MacNicol—single, childfree, and sexually charged—decamped to Paris for a month. There, she devoted herself to the guiltless pursuit of sensual pleasure: through a one-night stand with a 27-year-old met on the dating app Fruitz; by tracking down the Parisian addresses of Lee Miller and Edith Wharton; through a steady diet of rosé and chèvre; and by playing the flâneuse along the Seine and in the cool, echoing rooms of the Louvre (François Boucher’s L’Odalisque would become the memoir’s cover). That’s it—that’s the whole thrust of the book—and every page is as moreish as a cannelé.
Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key
In her forties…Poet Amy Key had been single for 22 years when she wrote Arrangements in Blue, a book loosely structured around the ten tracks of Joni Mitchell’s 1971 album. Dedicated to “anyone who needs a love story to being alone,” its pages explore the light and shadow of a life outside the “holy status” and “presumed structure” of monogamous partnership. This isn’t the book to turn to for comforting clichés: “The rhetoric that you must love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you can feel like a terrible burden,” she writes. Instead, Key presses on every emotional pressure point tied to being single, ultimately offering a sense of release. “I want to topple romantic love from its central position, hierarchy being at odds with love,” she concludes. “I can want romantic love at the same time as valuing and being fulfilled by what is present in its absence.”
Love in Exile by Shon Faye
After what she calls a “private little earthquake” of a breakup, Shon Faye—author of The Transgender Issue—looks back to examine her belief that she’s “incapable of practicing the skill of love correctly.” “I consider the two belief systems that have most influenced my ideas about love, while simultaneously causing me the greatest pain,” she reflects. “First, the belief that love is instinctive, simple and transformative… and, secondly, that happiness in love is achieved within heteronormativity.” Across eight expansive chapters, Faye tries to rewire her own thinking, exploring the push-and-pull of “traditional heterosexuality” in a wide-ranging journey that includes an ode to Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell, a response to Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, memories of queer club nights at Oxford in the 2000s, and recollections of dating “alt-posh” boys with endless philosophy degrees.
Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill
Before her death at 101, Diana Athill—the formidable editor of writers like Philip Roth, Simone de Beauvoir, and V. S. Naipaul—had written nine memoirs. Her first, published in 1962, moves from her childhood in 1930s Norfolk at Ditchingham Hall to her career in London’s Swinging Sixties publishing scene, all in pursuit of an answer to a consuming question: As someone who “missed the opportunity” to marry and have children, what had she lived for? This quest leads her to revisit a transformative affair with an RAF pilot and to consider how the painful end of their engagement set her on a path toward a different kind of fulfillment. “From this table, with this white teacup, full ashtray, and small glass half full of rum beside me, I see my story, ordinary though it has all been and sad though much of it was, as a success story,” she writes near the book’s end. “I am rising 43, and I am happier in the present and more interested by the future than I have ever been.”
Further reading…
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy
“As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story.” So begins Deborah Levy’s account of the years around her 50th birthday, when her marriage ended and she moved toward “a new way of living.”
Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord
Vogue’s former sex columnist offers a detailed yet deeply felt study of heartbreak through history, drawing on writers from Plato to bell hooks.
Liars by Sarah Manguso
A sharp, biting, and strangely addictive portrait of a heterosexual marriage gone badly wrong. This is a great read for anyone who’s ever wondered why two people who seem to hate each other ever got married in the first place—or maybe you’ll see yourself in it.
I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg’s 2022 memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You, explores…Way to Meet You explores the reality of a nomadic life—without a partner or children—to fully dedicate oneself to art. The author of The Middlesteins only bought her first real bed at age 45, having spent over three decades traveling across America and filling notebooks with ideas.
Splinters by Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison emerged as a contender to be “the next Joan Didion” with her debut essay collection, The Empathy Exams, in 2014. A decade later, her account of her marriage fracturing after the birth of her daughter offers its own lesson in sensitivity and generosity.
Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation by Rachel Cusk
“Marriage is a mode of manifestation,” Rachel Cusk writes in Aftermath. “It absorbs disorder and manifests it as order. It takes different things and turns them into one thing. It receives chaos, diversity, confusion, and it turns them into form.” Her own divorce, then, represented a shattering—of a home, an identity, a life—a process Cusk dissects with a surgeon’s coolness and precision.
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
A “thinly disguised novel” about the collapse of Nora “Everything-is-Copy” Ephron’s first marriage, containing both an infamous vinaigrette recipe and a landslide of aphorisms: “Let’s face it: everyone is the one person on earth you shouldn’t get involved with.”
The Years by Annie Ernaux
Annie Ernaux’s masterful memoir spans 70 years of life and reconsiders the very nature and texture of memory. Alison Strayer’s English-language translation, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, more than does justice to the Nobel Laureate’s taut, impressionistic prose.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs 15 Books for Singles or the Heartbroken This Valentines Day
Beginner General Questions
1 Why a book list for singles or heartbroken people on Valentines Day
Valentines Day can amplify feelings of loneliness or sadness This list offers books that provide comfort perspective empowerment and a healthy distraction turning the day into an opportunity for selfgrowth rather than a source of pain
2 Are these books only for people who are sad about being single
Not at all This list is for anyone who wants to focus on selflove personal growth or understanding relationships better Its for the happily independent the recently brokenhearted and everyone in between
3 Im not a big reader Are these books easy to get into
Yes the list includes a mix of genresmemoirs practical guides uplifting fiction and short essaysso you can choose what feels most accessible and engaging for you
4 Where can I find these books
You can find them at most major book retailers through local bookshops or as ebooks and audiobooks from your librarys app or services like Audible
Benefits Goals
5 What are the main benefits of reading these books
Benefits include feeling less alone in your experiences gaining tools to process grief or loneliness rebuilding selfesteem redefining what love and happiness mean to you and simply enjoying a great story
6 Will these books help me get over my ex
Many books on the list directly address healing from breakups They offer psychological insights shared stories and practical exercises to help you process the loss understand the relationship and gradually move forward
7 Can a book really help with loneliness
Absolutely Books can provide a sense of connection reduce the feeling of being the only one going through something and offer new ideas for building a fulfilling life on your own terms
Choosing the Right Book
8 Im in the raw early stages of a breakup What should I read first
Look for books that are gentle validating and not overly prescriptive A memoir about loss or a book of short comforting essays might be better than a dense selfhelp manual right now