'Alluring, shocking, welcome and wonderful'
Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

'The most delicious memoir that kept me in bed all day . . . I think she might be a genius'
Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover Games

'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'
Minnie Driver

From the author of Your Voice in My Head and Royals comes a beautiful, breath-taking, unputdownable memoir about love and heartbreak, sex and celibacy, growing up and starting again.

What happens when your story doesn't end the way you thought it would?

When the dream life you have been working towards becomes something you must walk away from?

When you swap a Hollywood marriage and a LA mansion with waterside views, for a little attic flat shared only with your daughter, beneath the star-filled sky of deepest North London?

When you find yourself not lonely, but elated - elated to be alone with yourself, who you genuinely thought you might never get to see again?

When, after a life guided by romantic obsession, you decide to turn your back not only on marriage, but all romantic and sexual attachments?

"Compelling, mystical, deeply moving, darkly funny. Busy Being Free is a poetic, incisive, uncensored study of female solitude. I adored it." - Dolly Alderton

"Emma Forrest can write the hell out of anything but where she truly excels is when she's writing about her life, which is often like something out of a novel... A glorious, sharp-as-a-tack-but-full-of-soul exploration of heartbreak and what happens next." - RED MAGAZINE

"Her writing hums with life, honesty and intelligence and underneath the romance and red carpets is loneliness and vulnerability." - THE TIMES

"Forrest is examining, with an unflinching eye and a formidable cultural frame of reference... 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... One of Forrest's greatest gifts as a writer - apart from her humour; like its predecessor, Busy Being Free is frequently hilarious - is her instinct for ambiguity. She writes so well about messy lives because she understands the contradictions we are all prone to... the fact that she has written about this mid life excavation with such ferocity and frankness is cause for celebration." - THE OBSERVER

"Not to be missed... Disarmingly candid, she reveals how she put herself back together after shattering heartbreak." - GRAZIA

"A rollicking good read - a lyrical and titillating journey through Los Angeles and North London." - MAIL ON SUNDAY

"A beautiful, unputdownable memoir about love and heartbreak, sex and celibacy, growing up and starting again." - SHEERLUXE

"Deeply moving and wryly warm." - HEAT MAGAZINE

"As well as being elegantly written, Busy Being Free is eminently readable - a treasure trove of profound insights into love, lust and female desire. " - DAILY MIRROR

"Hitting themes of heartbreak, romance, celibacy and self-discovery, it's a testament to the power of putting yourself first." - REFINERY 29

"Reading Busy Being Free isn't like reading at all, in the sense that you will never look at how many pages you have left, or wonder whether this was the page you got stuck on last night before sleep. It's more like drinking, or watching TV (no higher praise, in this books column). It is funny, compelling, and the product of a singular, valuable mind." - The Believer