The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel

He couldn't accomodate anything unexpected - it was all balanced, all perfectly timed, all completely interdependent on everything else. Any addition throws everything off.

That is taking responsibility, not doing what she wants just because she wants it.

But there was a catalyst,an event,a moment which changed everything and not just for us. This is good for storeytelling but bad for decision making, and it is frightening to look back and realise, were it not for that moment, all of our lives would have been so different.

Family, this technicality, mitigates all ills, no matter how diseased.

Friends, even good ones, sometimes wouldn't, not just because friends sometimes get mad and leave your life, but also because friends are sometimes their own priority.

It's like you're still with him in an alternate universe.

Part of her always remained awake, as if afraid of being caught unaware, as if afraid of being caught in a vulnerable state.

I am a firm believer in knowing people by knowing what they read, holding their favourite words in your mouth, running curious fingers along the spines of their books.

We all did. We had choices all along the way. We still do. I have stayed not because I had to, not because of the bounds of literature, not even because of the bounds of friendship. This, given the circumstances and my infinite options, is what I choose.

Desire and desperation aside, you have to wake up on a Sunday morning and want to spend the rest of the day doing the same things.

It was not a matter of failure on the part of either of them, just fate, and not failure in fate, just a delay, and not really a delay as there is a time for every season under heaven.

It doesn't happen until you're ready, but when you get ready and you least expect it, that's when it happens.

You don't get things just because you want them. Just beacuse you want them doesn't mean you're ready for them.

It wasn't just because he was so lovely and all consuming though he was both. He just put everything in perspective.

Confusion shouldn't be a deal breaker, shouldn't be a fatal flaw. Confusion was to be corrected and forgiven as perfectly understandable.

It felt as much like coming home as going to my parents' house, and I'd lived there for eighteen years.


This book gave me so much insight to tri-parenting, to motherhood, to friendships that evolve to become a family. To forgiveness and what it means to actually let someone come back in after 2 years, despite him turning his back on a child, his child. These I learnt from the story I was told. What's your story for the year?