So when a client tells me a book moved him, I listen. When several clients mention the same book, I consider it part of my continuing education. And when my adult daughter brings Heart the Lover by Lily King on vacation and can’t put it down, I pay attention.

I came to this novel without having read King’s companion book, Writers & Lovers. I will likely circle back. But Heart the Lover stands beautifully on its own—a work of elegant prose that captures both the innocence and the psychological complexity of young adulthood.

We follow a protagonist whose name is withheld until the final pages, a choice that feels psychologically intentional. Identity, after all, is not fixed in youth—it is constructed, tested, defended, and revised in relationship. Within an intoxicating circle of collegiate friends who both intimidate and inspire her, she becomes “Jordan,” a version of herself that feels braver, sharper, more socially fluent. She falls into a love triangle that ultimately crystallizes into something deeper: a connection between two ambitious, idealistic young people who want their lives to matter.
What unfolds is tender and devastating in equal measure. King captures something rare: the almost sacred intensity of first adult love. It is fragile. It is precarious. It is infused with longing and projection. And it is often unsustainable—not because the love is false, but because the people inside it are still becoming.

That is where the novel feels especially relevant to my work as a therapist.

Heart the Lover is not simply a romance. It is a study in development. It shows how profoundly we are shaped by our families—by what was spoken, and what was not; by what was expected, and what was silently demanded. The characters are intelligent and sincere. They want to love well. But wanting and being ready are not the same thing.

Many young adults carry into romance unresolved family dynamics, unexamined fears, and unconscious loyalties. The capacity for intimacy requires differentiation—the ability to remain oneself while moving toward another. And that capacity often lags behind longing.

What I admire most about King’s writing is her portrayal of the approach–avoidance dance so common in love: the simultaneous pull toward closeness and retreat from it. In one scene, the narrator waits at baggage claim for the man she loves. Her anticipation is electric; her body is alive with sensation. Yet she recognizes a quiet truth: if he fully understood the depth of her love, it would terrify him.
That moment captures something universal. Intimacy exposes us. To be loved is to be seen. And to be seen can feel dangerous when we are still uncertain of ourselves.

Alongside this exquisite rendering of young love, King writes with unusual clarity about existential awakening. Her characters metabolize pain in real time. They feel it in their bodies. They struggle with it. And through it, they become more conscious, more deliberate, more themselves.

As both a therapist and a mother of adult children, I find myself moved by that arc. Youthful love is rarely tidy. It can be misguided, misaligned, or mistimed. And yet it is formative. It shapes the nervous system. It clarifies values. It exposes vulnerabilities that must eventually be integrated.
In that way, heartbreak is not the opposite of growth. It is often its catalyst.

And perhaps that is why so many of my clients—and my daughter—pressed this book into my hands. It does what good fiction does best: it illuminates the private terrain of becoming.

The late Shirley Glass, a prominent infidelity researcher, encouraged an ideal script at the outset. Her suggestion is that when a married person notices a spark with another, it is highly advisable to discuss this spark with one’s spouse. To say something like:

“I was having coffee with Lucy today and I felt surprised that our conversation quickly became both personal and flirtatious. I was also surprised that I enjoyed it. It reminded me of how you and I used to be with one another, and I want to try to get that back. Can we work on that?”

If only more married adults chose to run this script.

Elizabeth Stroud’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, is one of her very best. In a showcase that feels something like a finale, she allows her beloved, previously unacquainted characters from her various critically acclaimed series to intersect and collide with one another in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Set during the later part of the pandemic, the novel begins with the meek, brilliant novelist Lucy Barton having recently befriended the angsty attorney Bob Burgess. The friendship has become romantic, though Lucy and Bob remain in denial of their palpable romantic spark. They believe they are good friends and insist their frequent walks are covid-friendly and purely platonic. Quirky local fixture Olive Kitteridge (of Stroud’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name) understands the blossoming romance between Lucy and Bob and easily sees straight through their blind spots. Olive’s friendships with Lucy and Bob animate the novel as does the plot’s unfolding murder mystery.

Stroud understands that intimate life happens in the small quiet moments rather than the large romantic gestures. Lucy and Bob cherish their deep unfiltered conversations. Lucy calls Bob a sin eater because she understands that Bob has sacrificed to much for others, especially his older brother. Lucy opens up about her impoverished and abusive childhood:

“But I don’t remember feeling envious a lot, Bob, and I don’t understand that. You would think, I would think, that I would have been envious of people from the start, all these mothers who seemed to love their children as they picked them up from school, all those kids who seemed to have normal lives, but I just somehow understood: That’s not my life. And I was always inside my head, and I remember thinking: I’m glad this is my head.”

Even Bob’s bad haircut illuminates the intricacy and hilarity of the human connection. He and Lucy both agree that it makes him look like a twelve-year-old with a man’s face, and their dual experiences of this unfortunate new style represent their powerful connection and the unexpected path forward.

Bob loves his wife, the minister of their local church. And Lucy loves her ex-husband William. Lucy and William reconnected during the pandemic and are giving it another go. Despite these satisfying unions, the chemistry fueling Lucy and Bob’s conversations anchor the plot and transfix these two central characters.

Emotional repairs, infidelity, betrayal, sexual abuse, neglect, isolation, therapy and memory are all important themes explored with rich emotional intelligence. And yet, as a therapist, what stays with me most about this beautiful story is its exploration of the road not taken.

As a therapist, what the review leaves out that will be relevant to viewers in therapy, is its exploration of grief, traumatic loss and depression. A lot has changed since the 1970s — during which the film is set and captures magically — but the shame and secrecy that plagues so many with depressive disorders remains. And the Holdovers treats this topic with seriousness and sensitivity.

Sadie is a gifted, determined, Jewish mathlete making her way in a man’s world where the gamers dominating the field often embody as much toxic masculinity as the characters in their games. Sadie’s grandmother is a holocaust survivor. Sam and Marx are both half Asian. In addition to being mixed race and estranged from his biological father, Sam has a chronically ailing foot that leaves him crippled and eventually amputated. Otherness and trauma are thematic threads that bind this gaming trio.
The book is also a love letter to artists – the title itself a Shakespeare reference alluding to the artistic elements necessary to create any truly great work of art including a meaningful video game.

What makes this love story most unusual (and somewhat heartbreaking) is its focus on what it means to be professionally in love as souldmate collaborators who do not consummate a romance, but rather engage in a relationship that lives and breathes in the creative realm rather than the romantic. What does it mean to make magnificent wholly original creative work as an authentic team. What is it like to love, live and breathe the work – without consummating a romantic path? Sadie and Sam meet and befriend one another while playing video games as children in a hospital game room. And Sadie’s somewhat OCD betrayal of Sam leads to a multi-year estrangement that is interrupted when they run into one another as college students in Boston. Gaming once again brings them together. Their collaboration lasts decades and includes all sorts of slights and pain points and highs and lows that mimic the arc of a married life.

The therapist in me can’t help but root for the romance, but the book’s captivating appeal challenges conventional psychological thinking about love, marriage, careers and relationships. Gabrielle Zevin successfully tells a flourishing, memorable love story that is a true original.

As an empty nester I feel reasonably grounded when I reflect on my approach to raising our daughters. I wish that we had found a way to live abroad at some point. It never felt like the right time, and though my husband had professional opportunities that would have allowed for postings abroad, I did not want to pause my psychotherapy practice. Overseas adventures aside, I have little regret. Correction, I HAD little regret until I streamed the academy award nominated 28-minute documentary How Do You Measure a Year?

Director and father Jay Rosenblatt films his daughter Ella every year, on her birthday, asking her a series of the same questions. What would you like to do when you grow up? How do you feel about our relationship? What are dreams? And so on. An intense range of emotions surged through my experience viewing this super short film. Some moments are so hilariously funny and remind me that no one is funnier than a toddler. Some moments I felt such worry and wanted to make Ella a chocolate milkshake and connect her with a good therapist. Oddly, I became distracted by the sofa’s fabric and felt relieved the year it is reupholstered. Family love infuses each slice of conversation, from a grandmother’s doting interruption to an unexpected burst of song. Most of all, I felt regret that my husband and I did not think to structure a similar annual video tradition to mark the passage of each year.

It’s too late for us, but not too late for others. And I assume that any parents with young children will find surges of inspiration from this magnificent film and will follow through to build similar traditions. But the most important takeaway is not the idea of annual filming, it is the impact of the annual segments, spliced together into less than a half an hour, showing us that it all goes by so lightening fast. How Do You Measure a Year? Hopefully it is measured by cherishing each and every moment you possibly can.

This phrase – despite and because of its grammatical flaw – was written and spoken and repeated by several social work professors in my early graduate training. A willingness to refrain from my own agenda in order to respect and deeply probe the psychological space and experience of my therapy clients is essential to my own clinical practice. Clinicians employ therapeutic strategies that allow us to challenge and guide and inject theory. But at the core of effective therapeutic work, the clinician must possess the emotional flexibility to respect each client’s unique reality and perspective.

Atul Gawande’s magnificent bestselling book,Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” frames an approach to end-of-life decision making and care that respects this essential social work guiding principle. A surgeon and staff writer for The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Medical School, Gawande has authored several bestselling books. Being Mortal explores how the trajectory of modern medicine’s success revolutionizing the dangers of birth and management of disease has evolved to a pattern of extending life above all else. Sometimes life is extended with blatant or even negligent disregard for patient preferences and priorities.

The problem with medicine and the institutions It has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine’s focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet – and this is the painful paradox – we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. For more than a century now, we have treated the trials of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It’s been an experiment in social engineering, putting our fates in the hands of people valued more for their technical prowess than for their understanding of human needs.

Gawande masterfully challenges this default experiment. He points to creative approaches to senior living like infusing care facilities with plants and pets and farm animals. He does a deep and illuminating dive into hospice care and calls for providers to take the time to explore and respect each patient’s priorities. He features the palliative care specialist Susan Block as a moral compass with the potential to reframe the approach to end of life care:

“You have to understand,” Block told me. “A family meeting is a procedure, and it requires no less skill than performing an operation.” One basic mistake is conceptual. To most doctors, the primary purpose of a discussion about terminal illness is to determine what people want – whether they want chemo or not, whether they want to be resuscitated or not, whether they want hospice or not… “A large part of the task is helping people negotiate the over-whelming anxiety – anxiety about death, anxiety about suffering, anxiety about loved ones, anxiety about finances…” No one conversation can address them all. Arriving at an acceptance of one’s mortality and a clear understanding of the limits and the possibilities of medicine is a process, not an epiphany…The words you use matter. According to palliative specialists, you shouldn’t say, “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” for example, it can sound like you are distancing yourself. You should say, “I wish things were different.” You don’t ask, “What do you want when you are dying?” You ask, “If time becomes short, what is most important to you?”

Gems of knowledge like the above quotations are laced throughout Being Mortal’s brave mining of the difficult topic of terminal illness and the near taboo topics of dying and death. This difficult, illuminating, transformational read enhances my clinical skills and reminds me that being where the client is at is a lifelong, essential goal.

The book jacket for Diary of a Mad Housewife describes the novel as “a classic of urban women’s fiction that gave a wry voice to the nascent feminist stirrings of the 1960s.” I’m not sure how I missed it on my mother’s bookshelf while growing up in the 70s, but she confirms that it was right there all along with prominent placement. This engrossing page-turner eventually became a popular Academy Award nominated film, and is full of extremes. Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Sue Kaufman’s best-selling novel paints a portrait of city life in the 1960s that demonstrates how much has changed and how much has stayed the same.

Despite how often characters telephone local shops and charge groceries to their monthly tabs, and a 200 dollar business suit described as an obscene expense, the novel reads as remarkably current. Kaufman’s take on the challenges of motherhood, identity, marriage, and sexual intimacy withstands the test of time.

We meet the novel’s protagonist, Betina (or “Teen” as her husband Jonathan calls her), when she decides to keep a diary as a fitful attempt to cope with the escalating pressures and chaos of her life as a Manhattan housewife. Betina hopes that journaling will help her make sense of her aggressive social life and growing discomfort with the family’s superficial trajectory. She knows she needs help and she finds reading as therapeutic (and comic) as journaling. D.H. Lawrence is among her comforts, as she enjoys the satirical timing while reading as her husband readies himself for bed:

“What is more, she felt she had always really disliked him. Not hate: there was no passion in it. But a profound physical dislike. Almost it seemed to her, she married him because she disliked him, in a secret, physical sort of way. But of course, she had married him really because in a mental way he attracted her and excited her. He had seemed, in some way, her master, beyond her.” I read it three times, and was going over it a forth when Jonathan came out of the bathroom and got into bed. I sat gripping the book, waiting: it was exactly the sort of ironic moment for him to propose a Roll in the Hay. It never failed.

Betina’s diary guides readers through excessive substance use, an extramarital affair, way too many taxi rides, and a slew of raucous cocktail parties that might make certain middle-aged readers feel a little bit boring! At its most depressing, the diary is testament to how easily financial success can lead families down a superficial and dismal path. But the novel’s conclusion feels modestly hopeful and alludes to the possibility that therapy can be worthwhile, even with a substandard therapist. Reading and journaling are, indeed, therapuetic, and authentic change is possible. This cheeky novel captivated readers when published in 1967, and can be healthy bibliotherapy for mothers navigating multiple relationship challenges.

When my book club selected Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel, Room, for our monthly read, I was not too psyched about revisiting this memorable, haunting tale. I saw the 2015 film in theaters and sat riveted through Brie Larson’s masterful performance which won her academy award for best actress in a lead role. Given the emotional impact of the film, I felt unmotivated to revisit the tale of five-year-old Jack and his mother (Ma) trapped in a tiny windowless space, held prisoner by the evil Old Nick while they plotted an unlikely escape.

I felt hesitant about returning to Jack’s fears when Old Nick would visit in the evenings and Jack was forced to hide in the closet (which doubled as his bedroom) and wonder why the bed kept banging against the wall and what Old Nick was doing on top of his mother. The horror of their ongoing captivity, the chill in the room when Old Nick did not pay the electric bill, the ongoing agony of Ma’s rotting teeth. These are some of the horrifying details I remembered. I was unsure about drudging up whatever details I had forgotten.

But Donoghue’s stunning novel captures the vivid corners of Jack’s inner emotional life much more deeply than the film. The book is told more completely from Jack’s earnest, innocent perspective. Jack may not like when Old Nick visits or seeing his mother despondent and comatose on the sporadic days when a paralyzing depression descends and immobilizes her. But Jack is content in their routine. He loves watching Dora the Explorer. He relishes trying to understand the difference between what exists inside the television and what exists outside in the world. He feels soothed by sensation of “having some” (his language for nursing) and his perspective remains mainly positive and satiated. Donohue manages to convey, through Jack’s descriptive perspective, the simultaneous experience of Ma’s ongoing trauma and her remarkable ability to shield Jack from her pain.

The bizarre and unimaginable circumstances of the plot set a stage that elegantly captures how profoundly young children form their world around their primary caregiving parent. Room is, at its core, a celebration of the immense power of unconditional love.

When Jack succeeds in Ma’s unlikely escape plan, the outside world causes a heartbreaking strain on their mother/child bond. After several years of captivity, they are finally freed! Jack is outside for the first time in his life, police are on the hunt for Old Nick, and all Jack wants to do is go back into the room and curl up in the only home he has ever known.

Once hospitalized for post traumatic medical, dental and mental health care, a well-intended therapist explains that his job is to help Jack recover from the trauma of living in the room and Jack thinks to himself:

“I don’t say because of manners, but he’s actually got it backwards. In Room I was safe and out here is scary.”

From a psychological perspective, the enclosed world of their room created a cocoon that met Jack’s primary needs for unconditional love and secure attachment. The room also delayed early developmental milestones of infant/mother separation and engagement with the external world. In this context, Jack’s believable and heartwarming headspace raises powerful insights about the bonds between mothers and children and how young children experience their world. The book is even more memorable than the film and I could read it all over again.

Lucy Barton, a relatable and compelling underdog admired by readers everywhere, is back for a third round in Elizabeth Strout’s magnificent continuation of a journey that began in a small New York City hospital room. Fans fell in love with Lucy reading the novel showcasing her name. My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and the engrossing follow up Anything is Possible (2017) trace Lucy’s story and those in her orbit, as they navigate illness, betrayal, abuse and love. Some of us (myself included!) were fortunate enough to see a Laura Linney embody Lucy with abandon in the critically revered Broadway show based on the book (2019).

Oh William! (2021) picks up several years later as Lucy grieves the death of her adoring second husband. Despite widowhood, it feels satisfying to learn that Lucy finally knew intimate and fulfilling romantic love. And unsurprising that Lucy’s first husband and the father of her children, William, is on his third marriage which comes to an abrupt conclusion when his much younger wife suddenly moves out along with their teenage daughter. Lucy and William’s two daughters are both grown and married, and Lucy’s literary career has continued to blossom. While William is grappling with marital abandonment and the faltering of his career, he makes the shocking discovery that he has an older half-sister living in Maine. This nod to his mother’s mysterious past pushes William to seek solace in his amicable friendship with Lucy.

Lucy and William’s dual journey through their own grief brings them together, and they decide to travel to Maine to learn more about William’s mother’s past. Oh William! carries a plethora of insightful jewels along the way. The plot looks backwards contemplating the backstory about William’s half-sister and other unexplored chapters in Lucy and William’s earlier life together. Family secrets and betrayals are contemplated, and Lucy reflects on the devastating memories of uncovering William’s infidelity years earlier:

A tulip stem inside me snapped. This is what I felt. It has stayed snapped, it never grew back. I began to write more truthfully after that.

Despite terrific professional success, the traumatic nature of Lucy’s childhood continues to define and drive her. Stroud understands this tension and continues to cultivate the inner emotional life of her protagonist, still trying to grow and understand and learn from her mistakes.

About authority: When I taught writing – which I did for many years – I talked about authority. I told the students that what was most important was the authority they went to the page with. And when I saw a photograph of Wilhelm Gerhardt in the library I thought: Oh, there is authority. I understood immediately why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It was not just his looks, it was the WAY he looked, as though he would do what he was told, but no one would ever have his soul…And – slowly – I realized this: This authority was why I had fallen in love with William. We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says, we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person, we are safe.

Oh William! continues a memorable journey that will leave readers longing for more. I can’t wait to reconnect with Lucy when she is in her Eighties!

Years ago, I worked with a therapy client who reached out when she learned that her twenty-three-year-old daughter was addicted to opioids. Remembering early days of motherhood, my client sobbed recalling her struggles to balance a demanding career as an academic with her daughter’s pleas for attention and affection. Her daughter’s needs were obviously understandable. Nevertheless, life as a young working mother felt incredibly overwhelming and clashed with her understanding how women are socialized to envision motherhood.

“I would give anything to return her hugs now. And to play with her with abandon on our messy apartment floor. At the time I felt suffocated. I resented how much she needed, and I have so few memories of letting go and enjoying it.”

Streaming The Lost Daughter on Netflix yesterday, I naturally remembered this client. During our work together, she was able to drop everything and help her daughter become clean. But as a very young mother, her daughter’s pleas that she drop anything felt torturous.

In her directorial debut, Maggie Gyllenhaal adapts Elena Ferrente’s novel exploring the complex emotional experience of motherhood with depth and honesty. Olivia Coleman plays the protagonist, Leda, who has rented a Greek seaside apartment for an extended visit. Viewers quickly discover that Leda is awkward, elegant, distant and strange. She becomes transfixed with a young, glamorous, bikini-clad mother, Nina (Dakota Johnson), and her young daughter who are close to her beach chair. Leda longingly eyes Nina frolicking in the sand, while Nina’s daughter clings to her mother’s taught body like an oversized choker. Late one afternoon, Nina’s daughter is lost on the beach, Leda finds her, and the two begin an odd and captivating acquaintance.

Nina’s manner with her daughter stirs Leda’s memories of young motherhood, and the film then begins to toggle between young Leda (Jessie Buckley) in her early twenties as a mom and present-day Leda (Coleman) in her mid-forties. Gyllenhaal does not look for tidy solutions or conclusive explanations. This is a messy film that asks deep questions about motherhood, freedom, sexuality and vitality. I found myself curious to know more about Leda’s own mother and her childhood experience. But the film works best in the contrast between what taboos it is willing to unpack and what it fails to explain.