LONELY

In the vein of "The Noonday Demon", "Manic", and "Beautiful Boy", this boldly honest and elegantly written memoir - the first of its kind - reveals the painful and sometimes debilitating experience of living with chronic loneliness.

Despite having a demanding job, good friends, and a supportive family, Emily White spent many of her nights and weekends alone at home, trying to understand why she felt so disconnected from everyone. To keep up the façade of an active social life and hide the painful truth, the successful young lawyer often lied to those around her—and to herself. She was suffering from severe loneliness. In this insightful, soul-baring, and illuminating memoir, White chronicles her battle to understand and overcome this debilitating condition, and contends that chronic loneliness deserves the same attention as other mental difficulties such as depression. "Right now, loneliness is something few people are willing to admit to", she writes. "There's no need for this silence, no need for the shame and self-blame it creates. There's nothing wrong with loneliness, and we need to start acknowledging this through a wider and more open discussion of the state." By investigating the science of loneliness, challenging its stigma, encouraging other lonely people to talk about their experiences and defining one person's experience, "Lonely" redefines how we look at loneliness and helps those afflicted see and understand their mood in an entirely new light, ultimately providing solace and hope. Emily White is a research lawyer, university instructor, and freelance writer. Her award-winning fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Adbusters, The Ecologist, Chatelaine, and The Journey Prize. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.