Read it and weep
Just imagine you are a woman in your 30s, and the father of your three young children decides that he needs some space. Or perhaps you are a woman in your 50s, whose husband feels that he will be better able to face the rigours of middle age with a 25-year-old girl at his side. Or imagine for a moment you are 15, there's this boy you really, really like, but suddenly he has stopped returning your text messages and now he even appears to have blocked you on MSN...
What book does a thinking, feeling (if extremely bitter) woman pick up at this critical moment? I am quite clear about the books one throws into a bag when summoned to hospital - Jane Austen and Douglas Adams remain, for me, the best antidotes to fear, pain and hospital food. And I am also quite clear on the practical steps one can take when one is dumped (for me, a bottle of red wine and, when enough time has passed, rearranging the furniture). But what does a woman read - first, to restore one's faith in oneself, and, second, to restore one's faith in the value of relationships... or better still to make them gloriously irrelevant?
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