When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of "social pain" to learn why heartbreak hurts so much--and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong.

Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist's living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe.

With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

Author: Florence Williams
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/01/2022
Pages: 304
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781324003489


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2021
Booklist 12/01/2021 pg. 18
Publishers Weekly 12/06/2021
Library Journal 01/01/2022 pg. 71
BookPage 02/01/2022

About the Author
Williams, Florence: - Florence Williams is the author of Breasts, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Nature Fix. A contributing editor at Outside magazine, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and many other outlets. She lives in Washington, DC.