' Illuminating beautiful . . . This is a special book full of little epiphanies ' Natasha
Lunn author of Conversations on Love The Examined Life the bestselling debut from
psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz was about learning how to live his new book Love's Labour is
about learning how to love When it comes to love why do we find things so difficult? Drawing
on over forty years of candid and surprising conversations with his patients Stephen Grosz
asks what gets in the way of our falling in love? And what must we do to stay there? In the
intimate space of the consulting room we meet the woman who can't post her wedding invitations
but then decades later can't decide whether to get divorced the friendship group that
explodes when an adulterous affair begins and the man whose partner's death is almost too much
to bear. As an analyst Grosz's unerring ability is to locate what ails the heartsick. As a
writer he elegantly shows how we can deploy the agonies of love as tools for understanding.
The labour of love is the work of a lifetime but in finally learning to see ourselves and our
world clearly we find we are truly ready to love one another. 'You will be better at love
after you read this book ' Andrew Solomon author of The Noonday Demon Praise for The
Examined Life : 'Grosz's vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces
of bare illuminating fiction. . . . It is this combination of tenacious detective work
remarkable compassion and sheer unending curiosity for the oddities of the human heart that
makes these stories utterly captivating' Sunday Times 'Writing with sympathy and insight
Grosz distils years of work into a series of slim piercing chapters that read like a
combination of Chekhov and Oliver Sacks' New York Times 'I was enthralled . . . profound and
moving large ideas packed into a slim volume' Observer
