Lonely: A Memoir

An astonishingly forthright work by a Canadian lawyer traces her painful personal journey through chronic loneliness in light of social taboos and changing cultural and medical notions. White can pinpoint the origin of her sense of loneliness to the early divorce of her parents, leaving her with long stretches of being home by herself as her two much older sisters and working mother were absent. She recognized later that her mother, too, had battled a self-imposed isolation, underscoring a genetic component to the state. Moreover, the author’s choice of practicing specialized law in a small Toronto firm provided her long hours in the office and little outside contact. Her loneliness, she found, became increasingly self-perpetuating: rejecting invitations, eschewing connections, and generally refusing to participate “in life in the way that it was meant to be lived.” The stigma of being lonely kept her from admitting her state for years (compounded by her inability to come out about being gay until she was 35); finally, she spoke with a sympathetic therapist and opened a blog to hear views from others. White plunged into research on the subject, revealing studies about the alienating nature of modern society and the health risks of chronic loneliness. White’s work is brutally honest as she emphasizes that loneliness is not the same as depression. (Mar.)