Busy Being Free: A Lifelong Romantic is Seduced by Solitude

Product Information

However, Forrest’s misery about her “small top-floor flat” seems trivial when she flaunts the wealth she continues to enjoy, including a custom-made spiral staircase, with a cut-out design to “cast light around the small space”. On the surface, Busy Being Free is about the end of her marriage to actor Ben Mendelsohn, and the tectonic lifestyle shift involved in moving from their LA mansion to an attic flat in north London, then solo parenting her young daughter through a pandemic.

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 book is billed as a story of female emancipation, albeit a very straight, white, middle-class one.In the age of social media, where most people try to paint a perfect picture of their (in reality) flawed lives, I find it really refreshing when someone is brutally honest about their thoughts and feelings.

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. For Forrest, who remains the primary carer for her and her ex-husband’s young daughter, freedom means feeling in control of her body and sexuality, regaining the sense of herself that for decades she cast aside in pursuit of romantic obsession.There’s dense, lovely prose in here, and it’s the type of memoir that doesn’t shy from embarrassing or unflattering details. It opens in London – where Forrest has moved to in the wake of her divorce from her Australian actor husband – when another mother visits her new flat and asks, “how did this happen to you?

Hitting themes of heartbreak, romance, celibacy and self-discovery, it's a testament to the power of putting yourself first. Emma Forrest’s second memoir, Busy Being Free is a vibrant and vivid account of both a crumbling Hollywood marriage and its aftermath, and the author’s life-long romantic obsession. It was well written and funny at times, and I liked the introductory chapters, but quite a bit of it seemed like empty good writing, sort of beautiful, and it felt like she was trying to make it profound, but ultimately meaningless. 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.Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Channel Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Greenland, Guam, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Republic of the Congo, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U.