“My scared voice also asks if it’s truly possible to have a chosen family when, for me at least, almost everyone in it is tied romantically to another, or will be, their sense of family closing in on itself as they couple up and have kids. I feel frustrated with myself for wanting to be someone’s number one. To be their person,” (Key 65).
Amy Key’s debut memoir examines how she spent most of her life imagining a great, romantic love story for herself that by her mid-forties never did unfold. Using Joni Mitchel’s Blue album, Key looks back at her expectations on love, on being single, and how to live a life without romantic love when it is so often seen as the only thing worth living for.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a memoir as vulnerable or as real as Arrangements in Blue. I adored Key’s honesty with her feelings as a single person, her heartache at a romantic relationship never occurring, her frustration at friends and family who view accomplishments in her life as less than since they don’t involve marriage or children. It was an unexpectantly relatable read, one that made me so happy to finally have many of my own thoughts and feelings acknowledged and validated to know that I wasn’t alone.
I’m not a big listened of Joni Mitchell, but Key’s does an excellent job relating experiences of her life from past relationships, traveling alone, her problems with debt, deciding whether or not to be a mother, and other instances with Mitchell’s songs. It’s clear that Blue is a deeply personal album to Key that has inspired her life in many ways, including in her perceptions of love, and each way she related the different songs to her experiences never felt like a stretch.
While there is a thread of hope in Key’s memoir there are no answers for how someone can achieve a life with romantic love that Key desires. Even near the end Key tells reader’s that she can’t stop hoping that it will happen for her. While this may seem disappointing or elicit feelings of panic in some readers, I thought the truth of it was refreshing. Key’s acknowledgment and comfort in being alone doesn’t stop her desire for romantic love, it doesn’t stop her from hoping that it will happen. It might, and it might not, but the message that Key leaves reader’s with is that a good life can be lived without romantic love being at the centre, and that it is better to focus on the things in life that do elicit love instead of focusing on what hasn’t happened.
Arrangements in Blue is an honest memoir that doesn’t seek to solve being alone but does give insight on finding love in different ways of life. I felt such a kinship with this book and am sure many others will as well.
Publication: May 9 2023
Publisher: Liveright
Pages: 240 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Essays
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fueled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn’t happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.
Using Joni Mitchell’s seminal album Blue – an album that shaped Key’s expectations of love – as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.
With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure. The result is a singular work – a beautifully-written and essential book about building a life on your own terms, which inspires us to live and love more honestly.
Sarah O'Connor 