Description

‘The book I’ve been waiting for my entire life’ DOLLY ALDERTON

Is it possible that life without romantic love isn’t so bad?

When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn’t happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.

Using Joni Mitchell’s seminal album Blue – which shaped Key’s expectations of love – as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself.
Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.

With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure.

The result is a book which inspires us to live and love more honestly.

**A SUNDAY TIMES AND INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***

‘Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy’ OBSERVER

Publisher Review

The book I’ve been waiting for my entire life. Utterly beautiful and funny and true. — Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy and solitude. * Observer * A beautiful, painful, liberating book. Amy Key writes with such tenderness and insight. — Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City This raw, gorgeous, pulsing memoir the harbinger of a real talent. * Sunday Times * Fearless… Wonderfully, Key’s prose retains all the intimacy of her verse. Arrangements in Blue is a tender, subversive study of love in its myriad forms. * New Statesman *