Arrangements in Blue

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 - an album that shaped Key's expectations of love - as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself. 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 singular work - a beautifully-written and essential book about building a life on your own terms, which inspires us to live and love more honestly.

©2023 Amy Key (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • 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

  • Raw, gorgeous, pulsing… 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

  • Amy Key writes with rare integrity, courage and style… a beautiful and necessary book.

    Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

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