Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Ilsa is forty-one, she works in insurance claims in Leeds, and she is lonely in a pub full of people who love her. She has five close friends and has had them for twenty years, since they were all in the same office in their twenties. They still go to the same pub every Thursday. When her mother was ill, two of them drove up. That is not a small friendship. That is the real thing. And she sits there and she is completely alone. What they do, she told me, is the commentary. Somebody's name comes up and the group takes it apart. It is not cruelty exactly; it is a sport, and it is extremely funny, and they have done it every Thursday for twenty years. And she was the best at it. When Ilsa took somebody apart the table would be crying with laughter.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
