A conversation about heartbreak with the writer Laura Pratt

"It's important to be able to identify the value that heartbreak brings to our lives. Both the way it pains, but also enriches us. In the end, it's all just part of the adventure."

Laura Pratt’s narrative non-fiction book, Heartbroken, landed on my desk early this year at a personal moment of Peak Heartbreak. I read it in a single sitting and gave it a lavish blurb, along with many other writers and reviewers who were similarly moved.

In the book, Pratt uses the story of her own agonising and shockingly abrupt break up nearly a decade ago as a framing device for a series of topical linked essays which examine the idea of heartbreak as a concept in literature, art, psychology and philosophy. Her open-ended conclusion is that heartbreak is not something to avoid, “get over” or even quietly accept — but a constant and unavoidable part of the human condition. It’s just part of us, so we might as well crack it open and suck the marrow out of it, she basically says. While this may well be true, few writers have explored the topic of emotional pain with such rich mixture of vulnerability, wisdom, erudition and dry wit. In Heartbroken, Pratt lays her personal pain bare and invites us not just to look at her own bashed up organ but also understand what such pain can teach us in our own darkest moments. It’s an extraordinary book and a surprisingly comforting read, a literary hot water bottle for the suffering. I was so sad and frightened when I first read it and it made me feel less lonely.

Our conversation below covers a broad range of topics including Pratt’s process as a writer, her rejection of the Freudian idea of “closure” and the widely accepted “stages of grief,” why her book moved some readers to vitriolic anger, as well as her decision to dot the “i” in her dog’s name with a heart. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be posting the audio tomorrow.

Like most of my author Q&A’s it’s for paid subscribers only, so if you’re curious please consider taking the leap and seeing what Laura has to say about writing, feeling and sifting through the smithereens lost love in the wake of a bad break up. She’s lovely and wise, I promise.