BEFORE YOU MET ME
An honest and moving insight into the emotional life of men.
Was this anything akin to love, this melodrama we seemed to bring out in each other? Was she really the one? I was trying my best to make her the one, or at least the one with whom I would stay. But one way or another, sooner or later, I knew I’d leave, she'd leave, we’d break up. I knew this. When hadn’t we – when hadn’t I? Every time.
At the age of forty-two, with the wreckage of a dozen broken relationships smoking behind him, Alan Close was single again. Again! This time, he decided to stop and take stock – and make a change. With unflinching honesty, Close explored his relationships, affairs, family history and struggle with a secret eating disorder in a desire for intimacy and peace with the past.
No man has ever written about relationships in this way. Humorous, lyrical and disarmingly candid, this memoir from novelist and former Good Weekend columnist Alan Close takes us inside what is to be a man today. Beautifully written and utterly compelling, it reveals much about men’s emotions and their attitudes towards relationships. It will hold a mirror to male readers and provide a rare insight for women.
Alan Close
Alan Close was born in Sydney in 1955. He is the author of The Romance of the Season (linked stories, McPhee Gribble 1989) and The Australian Love Letters of Raymond Chandler (McPhee Gribble 1995), a recreation of the correspondence between the famous crime writer and a young student from Orange NSW in the 1950s. He edited the anthology Men Love Sex (Vintage 1995), a collection of stories by men about love and relationships and his stories and poems have appeared in most of the major literary journals in Australia. For the past decade or so he has contributed essays and feature articles on men’s issues, relationships and spirituality to The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Weekend magazine, where he also wrote a fortnightly column on men’s issues.
Before You Met Me, his quest to understand why he couldn't hold a relationship together - and change it - was published by William Heinemann in 2008.
He now lives in Mullumbimby on the north coast of New South Wales. He teaches writing at Southern Cross University, the Northern Rivers Writers Centre and the Byron Bay Writers Festival and runs writing retreats and life writing workshops with his partner, the writer Sarah Armstrong. He also mentors new writers through the Northern Rivers Writers Centre and the Australian Society of Authors Mentorship Program.
Buy the Book
Visit Random House Australia, to buy copies of BEFORE YOU MET ME
For information about Life Writing Workshops and Writing, Yoga and Interplay retreats in Bali, please go to sarah-armstrong.com
Contact Alan on alan@alanclose.com
Other Books by Alan Close
