Before you met me A memoir of one man's troubled seach for love

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 her the one 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-four, 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, Alan 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 it 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 was born in Sydney in 1955. He is the author of THE ROMANCE OF THE SEASON and THE AUSTRALIAN LOVE LETTERS OF RAYMOND CHANDLER and edited the anthology MEN LOVE SEX, a collection of stories by men about love and relationships. For the past decade or so he has contributed essays and feature articles on men and relationships to The Weekend Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Weekend magazine, where he wrote a fortnightly column on mens issues. Closes latest book is BEFORE YOU MET ME, an intensely personal investigation of his relationship history. He lives in Mullumbimby on the North Coast of New South Wales with his partner, the writer Sarah Armstrong.

Random House Australia
Author: Alan Close
ISBN: 9781741661866