The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Busy Being Free

Emma Forrest W&N £18.99

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W★★★★★reaches hat happens when a woman 40 and hits the brakes on her career? Emma Forrest (right) is a British journalist, author and film-maker probably hitherto best known for her 2011 memoir Your Voice In My Head, which chronicled her mental health struggles.

Her new book, written during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, is a memoir about conquests, sexual and profession­al, and about the waxing and waning of marital power. It’s also a confession­al, marking the moment when Forrest takes responsibi­lity for her own actions.

She is divorced from her husband, actor Ben Mendelsohn, a month after Donald Trump’s election as US President and vows to remain celibate for the duration of Trump’s term. Busy Being Free details the downsizing of her life as she moves from an expansive home in Los Angeles, where she was busy directing her own movie, to a two-bedroom flat in North London, where she is busy baking cakes with the daughter she has with Mendelsohn.

It is written in the form of fragmentar­y, sometimes impression­istic recollecti­ons in which Forrest reflects on her relationsh­ips and their consequenc­es. It is at times funny and at times moving.

The title is a line from a Joni Mitchell song. ‘Her heart is full and hollow, like a cactus tree,’ sings Mitchell. And it’s music, not sex, that Forrest can’t live without. There are music references throughout. She reveals that the weird Alice In Wonderland-inspired video for the Tom Petty and the Heartbreak­ers song Don’t Come Around Here No More is ‘the core beating heart of my sexual being’, which possibly explains a lot.

It all makes for a rollicking good read – a lyrical and titillatin­g journey through Los Angeles and North London.

Forrest has grown up a great deal since Your Voice In My Head. Now she seems to be not only Busy Being Free but also Happy Being Herself. It is the story of an evolution from solipsisti­c self-harm to solid self-assurednes­s.

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