Nobody likes loneliness, but aloneness? It has its perks. Such is the consensus among the contributors that editor Natalie Eve Garrett (Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers) assembles for her gutsy and illuminating anthology, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone.
Though each of her contributors has a different take on being lonely, more than one writer touches on the particular flavor of loneliness that accompanies grief, being an immigrant or living through the Covid-19 pandemic. For one writer, the loneliness of a loveless marriage is ultimately cured by aloneness. Several contributors remark on the stigma of going solo, and a couple note a double standard: in "A Strange and Difficult Joy," Helena Fitzgerald observes that in popular culture "we have 'the bachelor pad' and 'the bachelor lifestyle' but no such phrases for women."
Garrett opts for an elastic definition of "alone," and it serves The Lonely Stories well. Of the clutch of contributors who take the word literally, such as those who describe attending writerly retreats, all revel in the social isolation, although Lev Grossman cautions against indulging in the romance of solitude too soon. He writes in the hilariously self-deprecating "Maine Man" about his "voyage of literary self-discovery" right out of college: artists "didn't need other people.... My little chrysalis of genius was going to seat one and one only." It was one too many, because six months of only Lev Grossman was all Lev Grossman could take. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer