JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

We’re skulking around bookstores waiting for a copy of In Love by Alfred Hayes to turn up.

What is the true practical use of a breakup book? When an important relationship ends you imagine you are in a completely singular situation, that no one else has endured quite the exact exquisitely painful situation that you are currently muddling through. You intuitively believe that your feelings are unique, sui generis, but it is somehow reassuring or uplifting to stumble on evidence that they are not. The pleasure of listening to certain songs or reading certain books is that, after an obligatory and useful period of disorienting isolation, they welcome you back into the human circle. It is oddly reassuring to see that you are not unique, i.e., alone, that this same tragedy has befallen other people, and they have mysteriously survived. (As Shakespeare put it: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not from love.”)

What follows is my list of the three all-time best breakup books:

Read The Best Breakup Books by Katie Roiphe in Slate.

Tune in tomorrow for the July LitWit Challengel