Busy Being Free: A Lifelong Romantic is Seduced by Solitude

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she understands her daughter’s disappointment at a party cake that she believes to be chocolate flavoured, but that is in fact Sachertorte – “a grown-up cake for a grown-up party – not especially sweet, no buttercream inside, just bitter marmalade”.

We met a variety of men during Busy Being Free – including both her worst sexual experiences, and then, later, some of her best – and despite their frequent appearance, Emma does a wonderful job of making the memoir about so much more than men. Hitting themes of heartbreak, romance, celibacy and self-discovery, it’s a testament to the power of putting yourself first.Sexual confidence is one thing, and admirable, but reviewing your whole life in terms of how disruptively irresistible you've been just feels really vain, not to mention limited in terms of what insight it can bring. Trying to tell the reader that life in a pokey flat in north London was better than a life in LA was laughable. I wonder what it is like to live with a mind like Forrest’s, which makes such shooting connections between things and sees a great pattern in it all. Early in her new London life, another mother looks around her tiny flat and asks, “How did this happen to you?

It made me laugh when she highly recommended being creative without having to worry about paying the bills. A beautiful, unputdownable memoir about love and heartbreak, sex and celibacy, growing up and starting again. Moving between past and present, from childhood memories to her honeymoon, from conversations with her daughter to the raging rows of a dying marriage and a newly forged sexual confidence, she gradually builds a picture of the ways in which her romantic impulses have shaped her trajectory.Emma wrote and directed her first feature Untogether , which premiered at the Tribeca Film festival. Published in paperback this week, the memoir asks: “What happens when your story doesn’t end the way you thought it would?