I am growing to love this life that I have built without you, this life that I built for myself.

After going through a devastating break-up last summer, I started burying myself in stories of love and grief in the hopes of finding some solace in fictional narratives. Here are 5 books that I would recommend to someone going through heartbreak. These narratives helped me to rediscover a sense of self, foster a better relationship with my body and recognise the importance of community in my healing journey.

Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews

Milk Teeth’s epigraph is a quotation from a taxi driver, in London, May 2019: ‘You’re so young. You can eat the whole world, if you want to.’ This deftly encapsulates so many of the novel’s concerns: youth, maturity and appetite — for food, for bodily pleasures, for freedom. But while the taxi driver makes it all sound enviably easy, the novel is about difficulties. This novel is often depicted as a summer day’s dream, but in reality, it is a deep dive into the struggles of battling an eating disorder. The picturesque backdrop of London and Barcelona paints a deep contrast between the outer world and the harsh inner world of the protagonist. Through evocative synaesthetic descriptions of sensations, places, food and people, this novel parallels the protagonist's relationships and adulting realities with her relationship to her body and emotional state.

“I chew slowly, tasting batter and sugar, the swell of the sea. It is delicious, even as part of me still worries about my body and what it will cost me. Guilt clogs my throat but I keep eating anyway, taking life in my mouth and choosing to be part of it, even though I am afraid. I want to grow bigger than my shame, to have mass and density, to leave marks and indentations, to prove my own existence.”

Milk Teeth is a book that reignited my memories of summer holidays spent abroad with dinners under the moonlight after a day of lounging in the sun. While it all seems very picturesque, our dinners were always marred by conversations around our uncertainty about the future and my fear of eating unhealthy foods. I felt like I had to be the perfect size to deserve the future that I wanted, as if food was a punishment for all the qualities I lacked. Underscoring the fear that comes with taking up space and navigating the unknown future, this book gave me the courage to push through the hesitation and live freely by my own rules.

Blueberries by Ellena Savage

Describing more than what it means to be female, this collection of essays transcends conventional gender discourse in a highly contemplative and evocative manner. It translates everyday experiences and frustrations into intriguing discourse that challenges the societal norms of gender roles. An insight into the deeper revelations surrounding trauma from sexual assault, abortion, teen pregnancy and bigotry, these narratives offer a covert sense of solidarity among trauma survivors.

Ellena Savage’s Blueberries: Essays Concerning Understanding explores bodies that travel the world and minds that run in place. Ruminating on her experiences across the globe—from Portugal to Portland—Savage meditates on the dichotomy of mental and physical consciousness, and her responses when the two aren’t in sync. This intensely cerebral debut collection operates like a set of mismatched china. The essays are charming, quirky, and at odds with each other. Some pages are written in a more academic style, while others are like the pages of a diary. Savage navigates as many forms as the places she travels, though no one style is superior to the other. Together, though, they carry equal importance in Blueberries.

This book in its entirety is a huge conversation about gender roles and emotions. Personally, it reminded me of how even among generations of women, there is a great disparity over the expectations and needs of their place in a household. Coming out of an interracial relationship, I navigated different cultural expectations of what it means to be a woman in a household. On one hand, I was expected to be a skilled homemaker and child bearer and on the other hand, I was expected to lead a successful career. I deduced that in this modern world, it is possible to do both, or either one. The most important thing is to make a choice based on what you envision for yourself.

Promising Young Women by Suzanne Scanlon

“ You feel empty, Elizabeth. It’s part of your illness.”

“Do you mean that you don’t feel empty?”

This book is about a young woman in institutional psychiatric care who ponders over what it means to live and to recover when everything in the world seems so loosely defined. She traces her journey in therapy rooms, the effects of antidepressants and self-harm and the meaning of life and grief.

During her stay in the psychiatric wards, she meets many other patients who suffer from various maladies. In this community of walls and group therapy sessions, she classifies the patients into categories- those who self-harm and those who are copycats, those who were “brave” and those who weren’t. She talks about her grief surrounding her mother’s death and internalising it into a pit of emptiness, the therapy sessions with her psychiatrist that seem to go in circles, and her failed career in theatre. Eventually, with a lot of blind faith and Prozac, she finds some hope in her future and is released from psychiatric care.

Suzanne Scanlon’s Promising Young Women is a novel-in-fragments that doesn’t wear its influences and inspirations lightly. The women Scanlon writes about are beautiful and elegant, and her stories somehow evoke melancholy without revealing too much. Intensely personal and pared down—the stories in this book are moods, feelings, thoughts, and experiences observed in close detail.

This book reminded me of hurt. After the break up, the pain was unbearable. All I wanted to do was scream and draw red lines all over my body so that people would know how much it hurt. But sometimes, hurt demands a quiet patience that sits with it instead of willing it away. By gently processing all the stages of grief in therapy, and coming to terms with all the complex emotions that arose, I learnt to find meaning in the process of healing and comfort in knowing that hurt will eventually fade away.

Okay Days by Jenny Mustard

Okay Days tells the story of Sam and Luc, from alternating perspectives, as they navigate life in their 20s both together and individually. But, to quote a famous line from a film I love (500 Days of Summer): ‘This is not a love story. This is a story about love.’ It’s at times chaotic, at times messy, and at times deeply romantic, but always an absolute joy to be part of. Some of the themes covered are body dysmorphia, grief and reproductive rights.

Luc is 27 and in a relationship with Sam, a 28-year-old Swedish woman on a work placement in London. While Sam flourishes in her career, Luc struggles to build his life as an adult and his anxieties are cast onto his obsession with thinness, disguised as a desire to be “healthy”. Overly-conscious about how his body looks and feels despite intense workouts and surviving on caffeine and water, his lifestyle is a sharp contrast to Sam’s, who is effortlessly beautiful. A contemporary take on the intimacies and drama of relationships, this story is ultimately a lesson in building one’s own identity in a relationship.

This book reminded me of navigating personality differences and the value of compromise. My ex and I had very different personalities- he was an extrovert while I was an introvert. He preferred to let things be and I liked everything planned to the greatest detail. We were dissimilar to such a great extent that it seemed almost impossible to imagine a future together. It often felt like to make the relationship work, one of us would have to compromise greatly or both of us would have to find a middle-ground that neither of us enjoyed. It taught me that before entering a serious relationship, we need to set boundaries with ourselves and with our partners to ensure that we do not lose our sense of identity.

The Orange & other poems by Wendy Cope

The Orange is a poem about the other side of grief–the side in which things start to look up, when the world gets a bit brighter and small things make you smile again. The poem’s ability to encapsulate the otherwise indescribable feeling of healing after grief is a tremendous achievement, as a reader can understand such an emotion without ever having to experience it themselves- a testament to Cope’s remarkable writing abilities.

Though the orange is the subject of the poem and the source from which its name is derived, it is arguably a trivial aspect of the poem. Instead, what makes the writing so captivating is the domino effect of this orange, whereby the speaker realises that ‘ordinary things’ such as ‘the shopping’ and ‘a walk in the park’ are at the root of their happiness. After a period in which grief taints everything with a particular shade of grey, the speaker is beginning to recognise that life has become easier to enjoy, and the ‘new’, unfamiliar ‘peace and contentment’ experienced in mundane activities is indicative of healing.

A large part about struggling with mental health is also about healing. This poem in itself reads like a lighthearted, warm embrace that inspires one to accept the pain and heal. The signature poem of sharing an oversized orange rebuilds trust and hope in community- a vital part that sustains long-term recovery.

This book felt like hope in a poem. When I was struggling with my emotions, I had friends who made sure I got out of the house, ate regularly and spoke to someone about how I felt. Even the simplest act of being present with me made a huge difference to my emotional state. Reading this poem felt like I had a friend beside me, cheering me on as I learnt to stand up and walk again.

“I love you. I’m glad I exist.”

References:

https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2022/07/milk-teeth-jessica-andrews-review/

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2021/04/30/ellena-savages-blueberries/

https://www.popmatters.com/164646-promising-young-women-by-suzanne-scanlon-2495803864.html

https://www.nbmagazine.co.uk/editorialarchive/okaydays

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/28/the-orange-and-other-poems-by-wendy-cope-audiobook-review-an-understated-greatest-hits-collection

https://www.eslj.co.uk/post/a-review-of-the-orange-by-wendy-cope-1992