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Start giftingA Manual for Heartache
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Learn more'I devoured A Manual for Heartache in one sitting . . . a kind, honest and wise book about how to make a friend of sadness.' Rachel Joyce
When Cathy Rentzenbrink was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart by an unthinkable tragedy. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world again. She explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and how we can emerge from suffering forever changed, but filled with hope.
This is a moving, warm and uplifting book that offers solidarity and comfort to anyone going through a painful time, whatever it might be. It's a book that will help to soothe an aching heart and assure its readers that they're not alone.
Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Last Act of Love, How to Feel Better (A Manual for Heartache), Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books, Write It All Down and Everyone Is Still Alive. It took her twenty years to wrestle her own life story on the page and she loves to use what she has learnt about the profound nature of writing the self in the service of others. Cathy has taught for Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative, at Falmouth University and at festivals and in prisons, and welcomes anyone, no matter what their experience, education, background or story. She believes that everyone’s life would be improved by picking up a pen and is at her happiest when encouraging her students to have the courage to delve into themselves and see the magic that will start to happen on the page.
Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Last Act of Love, How to Feel Better (A Manual for Heartache), Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books, Write It All Down and Everyone Is Still Alive. It took her twenty years to wrestle her own life story on the page and she loves to use what she has learnt about the profound nature of writing the self in the service of others. Cathy has taught for Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative, at Falmouth University and at festivals and in prisons, and welcomes anyone, no matter what their experience, education, background or story. She believes that everyone’s life would be improved by picking up a pen and is at her happiest when encouraging her students to have the courage to delve into themselves and see the magic that will start to happen on the page.
Reviews
A Manual for Heartache explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and provides reassurance that suffering may change us forever but we can emerge filled with hope. I read A Manual for Heartache in a single sitting. Cathy’s not a therapist or a doctor and this book is all the better for it. It’s human and kind and rooted in the everyday, in the language that we all recognise and the horrors that we all experience when we feel out of control or so lost we can hardly speak. I loved it. I’ve learned from it. Every house needs one: like a torch and a spare fuse it can help you find your way home. A Manual for Heartache is a book that could change the life of someone whose hands it finds its way into at the right moment. I wish I could go back and give it to my younger self at various points in my own life. A copy should be issued to every teenager in school . . . It delivers that most important of messages: You are not alone. Generous, honest and uplifting. People need this book. A Manual for Heartache is wise and insightful. It is one of the most touching and honest books I've read and I expect it will light the end of the tunnel for many. It is very brave and very true. Cathy Rentzenbrink is a light in the dark. I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend this book to. A wise, clear, warm and inclusive friend to help you through times of great sadness -- whether your own or a loved one's. This book should be available on prescription. When my life turned upside down, this is the book I wish I could have read. If anyone you know is in the depths of grief, A Manual for Heartache can show you how to be the friend they need. I devoured A Manual for Heartache in one sitting . . . a kind, honest and wise book about how to make a friend of sadness. Poignant . . . If her first memoir honoured her brother, Rentzenbrink’s slim follow-up honours her recovery. As in The Last Act of Love she is dignified and eloquent, but she is also more confessional . . . A Manual for Heartache is short on pages and short on self-pity, but big on compassion and supremely big-heared. It is a generous and important addition to an expanding shelf of therapeutic memoirs that help us blunder through modern life A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink might not sound like holiday reading, it’s the perfect choice for anyone keen to use the time off to make sense of any recent emotional upheaval Expand reviewsWant the printed book?
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