Busy Being Free: Starting Again on Your Own by Emma Forrest

Busy Being Free: Starting Again on Your Own Reviews

• 
  Lauren Baker

  I will start by saying that this memoir is witty and raw and for the most part feels honestly and beautifully written.
  
  At times I laughed out loud but I also nearly gave up on the book two or three times because the name dropping and superfluous vocabulary became irritating.
  
  For example:
  1.“Ben will often perseverate over a song.”
  2.“I got the denouement of the video wrong.”
  3.“I could recoil at his sangfroid all I liked but that didn’t undo last nights multiple orgasms.”
  
  I love words as much as most avid readers. I did an English degree and especially enjoy poetic writing on topics that resonate with me such as this one, but the context in which these words were used (i.e. talking about her husband’s obsession with a Kanye West song or her toyboy being ridiculously cool) just annoyed me. We get it. You can use uncommon, fancy words. You know famous people. It took away from the real life situations she was describing rather than add anything to them and this grated on me at times.
  
  Having said that, there were parts of the book that I really enjoyed and that also made me reflect on my own experiences in a new light. She redeemed herself for the fact I had to keep looking up words.
  
  Some things she wrote beautifully about : how we can think our life is going one way and ends up going some where different and how the place you grow up is the source of all shame.
  
  It made me laugh when she highly recommended being creative without having to worry about paying the bills. I wish. She moaned about not being able to afford to buy a place in London with a garden. Most people can’t even afford to live there period. But I tried to stay with her frame of reference and could see that coming from a huge Californian house would be a huge adjustment and I accepted her invite into her assimilation and transformation, warts and all.
  
  This memoir reflects on so much more than just divorce; it explores her formative experiences, raising her young daughter with and without a partner, her relationships with her parents, music that impacted her, writing and fashion, the self esteem rollercoaster, making it through lockdown and her first sexual encounters after years of choosing celibacy.
  
  Forrest pours herself into the pages of reflection on identity, sexuality and living an illusion. I sensed her empowerment when experiencing zero intimacy and willingly living her sexual prime alone, she realised that energy “doesn’t just vanish, it alchemises” and described those as the most fertile years of her life.
  
  I took comfort in many of the things she revealed she processed post divorce and her exploration of shame and disappointment.
  
  To end, here are a few of my favourite quotes from the book that I feel represent it’s flavour.
  
  “For someone whose career has started in journalism, I didn’t ask anybody anywhere any of the most basic questions. I asked some interesting abstract ones. I think this made for good interviews and less successful life choices.”
  
  “I was at the cemetery, admiring the flowers and books at the graves of Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. The thing found most painful about divorce is that there was no Mark spot at which to leave offerings…. Songs are the place to leave offerings by everything you lost and everything that stayed - and they’re the flowers too.”
  
  About relationships: “… to be seen, to have witnesses, is the most you can ask.They don’t have to stay forever. They can stay a decade or a year or six months or three months or one night and what they saw with you will not go away just because they have. It was real.”
• 
  Melissa

  Begrudgingly into it
• 
  Apgepps

  This book just really didn’t do what it said on the can..
  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.
  For a memoir that is meant to show the freedom she gained by being alone, I don’t understand why it was essentially just a list of every single interaction she’s ever had with a man, most of which are romanticised. Especially frustrating is that there’s no growth in this respect- she decides to be celibate for five years, and then needs her ex-husband to draw her out of her obsession with her new boy toy once she’s ready to date again. Plus there’s a weird focus on sex (seeing the moon while you shower turns you on? Hearing a new song or writing new material makes you rip off your pants? Seriously?) which feels a bit forced and over the top.
  I did like her descriptions of the women in her life, and that some bits were very honest and emotional, with real pockets of insight (just annoying that they were always shortly followed by something shallow or vapid).
• 
  Laura

  Both darker and filthier than I expected (what did I expect from a divorce memoir?) — made me uncomfortable at parts but also opened my mind, overall enjoyable read
• 
  Em Ledger

  I absolutely LOVED this book. I was encapsulated in this world Emma describes so beautifully and looked forward to reading more every night before bed. There are many parallels to my own life the last few years and to feel seen like that wasn’t something I was prepared for. The main thing I respect about this book is the raw honesty and beauty emanating from literally feeling free enough to share her story in exactly the way she wanted to. Didn’t want it to end.
• 
  apryl

  3.5/4? a very easy read, i smashed this in two afternoons; i unashamedly love emma’s writing and as someone who was deeply invested in her marriage to ben mendelsohn, this was so so fascinating. i had no idea he hated whiplash that much.
• 
  Keely

  
  I really enjoyed this. This book was very honest, almost too honest. It was honest to the point where there was at times I thought "Why would you admit to that" but I admire her honesty neverless. I could never. Unapologetically being yourself and all your weirdness. So I respect it. I had never picked up the authors books before but I'm definitely going to pick them up in the future, especially her other non fiction book. Emma has lived a very different life to me, so it was very interesting to learning about her life. She's a very talented writer.
• 
  Hannah Harazawa

  Forrest writes excellent Non Fiction, I love how she describes ambivalence in a relationship. ‘Your voice in my head’ is one of my favourite books and she describes Love Addiction so well
• 
  Nathalie Bilinsky

  Wow! What a breathless read… very raw and vulnerable and I couldn’t get enough. Such a gorgeous writing style and prose too…
• 
  Ana Bakalinova

  Repetitive all throughout. I got bored at the end and not interested. Waste of time.
• 
  Joselle

  I’ve loved Emma Forrest since her first novel, Namedropper. This is perhaps her strongest book. Her writing has deepened and certain lines grabbed my heart. Still, I didn’t give it 5 stars because the ending seemed rushed to be tidied with a nice bow. And her ex-husband was straight up abusive at points but those behaviors are sort of described as just personality quirks. I don’t know if that’s how it was edited or if Emma has blinders about that. Still, I really loved reading Emma’s honest, messy, beautiful thoughts on motherhood, aging, sex and more.
  
  Some favorite lines:
  
  “Especially for women. Especially as we are deemed, with each passing decade, to be of diminishing value. Because someone who is that crazy, someone who takes beyond their fair share with their broken energy, cannot be the one to tell you you no longer exist.”
  
  “To be a woman is to balance between how much we want to have sex with a particular person and how our greatest fear is having sex against our will with a stranger. Sex can bring us closer to ourselves and sex can dissect us from ourselves. It contains, within its possibilities, total freedom and absolute fear.”
• 
  Nat

  Regardless of content a page turner deserves 5 stars because it was compelling enough to keep turning to find out what was next. This is really a divorce memoir and people really need to understand the burden and freedom in divorce. It's a fucking roller coaster. Particularly loved the divorce outfits chapter. Despite sometimes having to re read a sentence, I thoroughly enjoy the juiciness and honesty of Emma's writing. And who doesn't want to read about celebrity gossip and Hollywood Hills? Mild escapism with truism of life.
• 
  Fozz

  I was constantly dog-earing the pages with divine and filthy quotes coming one after the another. Super easy to get through but the structure and timeline just wasn’t my fave.
  Also, loved reading about another Fozz.
• 
  Jaclyn

  I loved Your Voice in My Head and this did feel like its grown-up sequel in many ways. It is written in vignettes that felt repetitive at times and I couldn't keep the men straight, but maybe that is by design. Many pieces of clothing are described and I request pictures of all of them.
• 
  pgb

  a novel as swell as the feeling of singleness.
  an author who celebrates her solitude and rejoices in her freedom.
  a reminder to start again on your own terms, in your own way, by yourself.
  
  
  beautifully written; would love to devour more of EF’s works
• 
  Emily Carlin

  😂 absolutely kooky 😂
• 
  Jodi Jacobson

  Brilliantly written.
• 
  K

  Finished on my 39th birthday in Canberra.
• 
  Andjelka Jankovic

  Brilliant, moving, inner life poetry kind of stuff. Hugely value the frankness and letting us behind the curtain of her romantic and celibate selves. Very entertaining too!
• 
  Hazel Lawrence

  was so bad, couldn’t even finish it
• 
  Tamara

  nope.
• 
  Fern Beattie

  Exactly the type of book I like to read.
• 
  Keri Bainborough

  Forrest captures many of our inner thoughts as middle aged women and mothers so beautifully on the page.
• 
  R

  What an empty, impulsive and undisciplined life. What happened to shame?!