My answer to "what’s your favourite book?"
and a memorable evening in a bookshop, ten years ago
On May 16th, 2014, I was sitting at my desk in central London, working at the now-defunct magazine The Debrief, when an email landed in my inbox. It was from a press officer named Elizabeth Morris at Simon & Schuster. I was 24, with only a handful of 500-word think pieces to my name—barely published, still figuring things out. A few years earlier, I had worked in PR, and during a short in-house stint at Unilever, I used to pass a sign for Little, Brown Book Group in the same building. Every time, my heart ached to be part of the publishing world. But at the time, I was still writing copy about soap.
I took a significant pay cut to work at The Debrief, but I’ve always believed in what I call the “elastic band” method: sometimes you have to be pulled backward in order to be propelled forward. That’s exactly what happened. On paper, it looked like a step back—lower salary, heavier workload, a less impressive LinkedIn title—but being in that fast-paced magazine environment brought me closer to the world I truly wanted to be part of. I loved being surrounded by writers, books, and bookish people. I loved the thrill of being invited to literary events—and I especially looked forward to press releases from publishing houses landing in my inbox. One in particular stands out in my memory:
*ping!*
Date: Fri, 16 May 2014 at 17:43
Subject: THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS
Hello,
I’m emailing you about an absolutely amazing book – The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan which we are publishing in early July. We acquired it last week and I devoured it in one day. I posted you a bound manuscript copy earlier this week!!
It’s a beautiful collection of short stories by Marina Keegan, who tragically died in a car crash a few days after her graduation from Yale.
This is a collection of her stories — rescued from her laptop amidst the wreckage of the crash — and it’s extraordinary. Each piece is very youthful and filled with hope, but the writing is also sharp, witty and incredibly poignant. What’s touching about this book is that it captures a compelling voice at an early stage – I think she would have gone on to be a big literary star.
It’s mind-blowingly good.
Very best,
Elizabeth
I immediately Googled Marina’s name and found her 2012 essay on the Yale website—also titled The Opposite of Loneliness—which had gone viral. The poignancy of her words, and the heartbreaking irony, hit me hard.
“We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time.”
“I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old.”
It was unthinkable—so unbearably unfair. How could someone so young, so full of promise, be robbed of her life so early? She was only 22. She had an editorial assistant job lined up at The New Yorker.
The introduction to the book, written by her former tutor Anne Fadiman, sets the tone immediately and reveals the extraordinary grace of Marina’s family. After the accident, in which Marina’s boyfriend lost control of the car, her parents invited him over the next day and embraced him.
The book was published posthumously, a collection of that essay and others—and it felt deeply sad and surreal to discover a new favourite writer, and know there would never be anything more.
I replied to Elizabeth’s email, devoured the book overnight as soon as it arrived, and wrote a review. I featured it in a Stylist magazine round-up, wrote about it on my blog, offered a quote, and tweeted about it incessantly. (More recently, I included it in a Red feature on my favourite books and spoke about it on the Women’s Prize podcast.)
Over time, Elizabeth and I started meeting for coffees and long chats in the sunny garden at The House of St Barnabas. She invited me to publishing events and readings at Waterstones Gower Street, gently drawing me closer to the world I’d always wanted to be part of.
A few months later, Elizabeth invited me to something incredibly special. On what would have been Marina Keegan’s 25th birthday—October 25, 2014—her parents, Tracy and Kevin, hosted an evening to celebrate Marina’s book, filled with readings and tributes. Marina’s friends from Yale read aloud their favourite passages. Her dad shared how gifted she was at crafting titles and headlines. Someone even read out a funny Facebook message she’d sent, full of wit and life. Marina's high school English teacher, Beth McNamara, was there too, and urged me to go home and watch a video of Marina performing one of her poems—to witness her passion and energy firsthand.
I’ll never forget Marina’s father, Kevin, saying that night: “Marina wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered because she’s dead. She’d want to be remembered because she was good.”
I reached out to Elizabeth this week to see what she remembered about that evening back in 2014. Since her bookselling and publishing days, she’s become a writer, book reviewer, and the creator of Crib Notes—a brilliant monthly Substack newsletter offering book recommendations for knackered mothers (you’ll also find her on Instagram). Elizabeth is the Books Columnist for Sonshine magazine and is currently working on her first non-fiction book. It was a joy to reconnect with her over email; and she reminded me of a few things I’d completely forgotten:
EMMA: I don’t think I would have discovered the book if it wasn’t for you! Thank you. Do you remember your first time reading it and how you felt?
ELIZABETH: You know that feeling when you first open a book and you think, ‘this was written for me’? That is how I felt – I was 25 at the time, just a few years older than Marina Keegan, and something in her writing captured the millennial zeitgeist: being young; the exhilaration and uncertainty of wanting to do so much with one’s life; and a sort of shimmering sadness that this moment will soon have passed. I remember the epigraph so well:
‘Do you wanna leave soon?
No, I want enough time to be in love with everything...
And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.’
And of course, in the context of Marina’s death, this was so poignant.
EMMA: You were working for Simon & Schuster UK at the time - what was your experience like, working across this very special book?
ELIZABETH: We decided to publish the book very quickly when it became clear that the edition published by Simon & Schuster in America was making a stir. There was a sense among everyone that The Opposite of Loneliness was kind of magic, and everyone was enchanted by it in different ways. It seemed to resonate with many different people – not just young women! Many of the journalists and critics who wrote about it were male. And I remember someone in the office, who was older, speaking rapturously about one of the essays, saying ‘She’s just writing about a car – and somehow she brings it to life!’
EMMA: Later in 2014, you invited me to participate in an event celebrating Marina and her book at Blackwell’s in Oxford with her parents and friends. Whose idea was it, to get together in this way? The whole evening felt heartfelt and special. A celebration of such a talented writer and daughter and friend.
ELIZABETH: I’ve always loved organising literary events and with The Opposite of Loneliness I had the unique challenge of putting together a publicity tour without the author—and for the most heartbreaking reason. It required emotional sensitivity and a great deal of creativity—I didn’t want the events to feel like a vigil; I wanted them to reflect how dazzlingly alive Marina’s writing felt. And so as well as having speakers who knew Marina personally, it made sense to me to invite someone whose connection to her was through her words alone. And that person was you!
EMMA: It was incredibly special. I remember *exactly* how I felt (moved, inspired, and honoured to be there). My memory feels patchy in some places. What do you remember from the night?
ELIZABETH: I have a feeling I asked you to read the title essay, ‘The Opposite of Loneliness’? Like me, you clearly saw a bit of yourself reflected in Marina and so it felt right for you to read that piece. Alongside you were two of Marina’s university friends who read their own favourite passages, and the wonderful writer Cathy Rentzenbrink led a discussion with all of you. The conversation was a moving and inspiring mix of memories from Marina’s friends, and your response to the book as a reader and writer. Marina’s parents were in the audience watching, it was a really beautiful evening.
EMMA: I think about Marina so often. I think of her when I’m afraid to write something—and then decide to do it anyway. Does she continue to inspire you?
ELIZABETH: I do too – but the way I think about her has changed. At the time and in my twenties it was more a sense of identifying with her. Now that I’m 36, I think a lot about how very young twenty-two is and, also, about what it might be like to lose someone like that. Marina’s life was so short but so bright, and that brightness was carried forward by everyone who came into contact with her – whether it was those who were close to her or those who read and cherished her book. I spent a lot of time with her mum, Tracy, and I remember her grief being so deep, but also her love for her daughter really shone. There’s something very life-affirming in that, I think – we don’t know how long we have with those we love, so it’s a reminder to embrace their brightness whilst we can?
I return to Marina’s book whenever I need comfort, wisdom, or resilience. There’s something timeless, deeply wise, and powerful in the way she wrote. I still can’t quite believe a 22-year-old wrote it—she just got it.
Now, sitting here in my mid-30s, I am still moved to tears when I talk about my love for Marina’s work. I am immediately connected to that version of me in 2014, longing to write for a living, the girl who read The Opposite of Loneliness under the covers, in silence, while the moon shone outside my window, feeling deeply connected to the author for reasons I didn’t understand. That longing of wanting to connect and write fiction and blogs and newsletters and speak in bookshops. The more time goes on, the more unfair it all feels. That one person would get the chance to live out their creative life and another wouldn’t. By speaking to Elizabeth, it's clear we both feel privileged and grateful to be doing this work and feel changed by reading this book. And so, I’m trying to sum up that feeling.
I don’t want to take any of it for granted—being alive, being here, and having the chance to make things. When I re-read Marina’s words, the reminder to live life out loud, with love, always feels immediate. It's right there in front of me, with such clarity, every time I pick up her book.
Thinking of you, Marina Keegan.
Thank you. <3
An anniversary edition of The Opposite of Loneliness has just been released, featuring a beautiful new introduction by Rebecca F. Kuang, author of YellowFace (in which she writes a letter to Marina). You can get your copy here.
And you can follow more from Elizabeth here:
My god, i remember when it came out. I remember us talking about it together! It’s the most wonderful book, I own it still and think of it often. Thank you for this x
I bought this book when it came out and remember feeling so similar to the way you have described here. My copy is battered and worn now after accompanying me on many house moves in the past ten years - today I’m going to take it off the shelf and see how it resonates with the 35 year old version of me.