Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord and No Hard Feelings by Genevieve Novak
No Hard Feelings (2022) a novel from Genevieve Novak and Notes on Heartbreak (2022) by Annie Lord, a memoir, are books that were written in isolation but are best read together. Both are stories of young women, fictional Penny and real-life Annie, who are left reeling from the ending of relationships and must navigate the time afterwards, defining who they are alone for themselves. I read these books back to back, and how they intertwine endears me to both more than if I had read just one – together, they form a micro-canon in my mind.
Both books shine by allowing the reader to share an intimate narrative without being asked to bear witness to something brutal or traumatic to achieve it. These two books are the antithesis to rough and difficult stories, filled with gauzy yet robust writing. While their writing style differs on a line level, they connect in their ability to construct a vulnerable experience that feels like it could be reached by a reader’s outstretched arm. After reading, I was convinced the writers were longtime friends or writing partners, or shared mutual editors or mentors. However, these two women appear to be strangers, separated not only by distance (Lord is British, Novak is Australian), but by genre too: yet they command intimacy in their writing with a haunting similarity.
In No Hard Feelings, Novak pushes Penny through a gauntlet of modern trials: an impenetrable manager, an ex-partner she cannot stop thinking of, familial communication challenges and friends she feels close to yet isolated from. The novel is written with Fleabag-esque asides to the reader sprinkled throughout, bringing a casual, confessional air to the narrative. Her problems are not trivialised; Novak lets these everyday challenges take up the frustration, agony and overwhelm they deserve. Lord does this too in Notes on Heartbreak, detailing small moments that are casually devastating, allowing herself to validate how much these vignettes in her life impacted her. In both books, things that may be relegated to ‘girl talk’ are taken seriously, a refreshing take both in contemporary fiction and modern memoir. On a trip to Lisbon with one of her close friends, Lord exemplifies the weight of these light-hearted conversations.
“She crinkles up the paper bag in her hands, throws it in the bin and carries on talking. ‘Maybe we could live without men? You know, like in that convent. Those nuns seem to have an alright time of it.’
I lean over and rest my head on her shoulder.”
Lord’s structure ricochets between before and after her breakup with her partner of five years, flashing between the two during the same train of thought. While this pace takes some time to get used to, on second reading, her memoir couldn’t have been written chronologically without compromise. This flow of past memories and present progression create cadences that ask the reader to interrogate how consequential these formative memories are to the decision she makes in the wake of her partner leaving. While Novak’s novel follows a chronological structure that builds Penny as a character for the audience, Lord comes to the reader fully formed, for us to figure out rather than learn.
What marries No Hard Feelings and Notes on Heartbreak is how both authors navigate the expansive aftermath at the end of a relationship. Lord has a more introspective take on healing, while Novak explores belonging beyond romantic partnerships. In No Hard Feelings, I took notice of how intimate and candid Penny’s friendship is with her longtime friend Annie, a lawyer. Annie sees how exposed Penny feels throughout the novel, battered with insecurity in relationships and her career, and in their interactions it is clear that being with Annie is a relief from the thrum of the storm Penny is weathering.
“Annie starts off on a sweet story about Emmy’s failed attempt at a paleo breakfast on the weekend, how they ended up having a lovely morning eating lumps of charcoaled banana pancakes out of the pan on the balcony. It’s imperfect and silly and easy, and the look on her face as she talks about it leaves me happy and sad in every breath.”
Novak allows her supporting characters to probe for realisations in her protagonist, while Lord refers to experts, quoting the likes of Ether Perel, Anne Carson and Simone de Beauvoir. Each piece of writing lets casual moments hold strength. Both books are filled with scenes that are poignant, zesty, messy and clarifying, as both Annie and Penny work on moving on.
Novak’s character’s interactions can be left unredeemed, which has a satisfaction to it that Lord cannot be afforded. Everyone in her memoir is called by their real name and thanked in the acknowledgements. Her skin is still in the game with these people, and as such, Lord must hold a reservation around her supporting cast she does not save for herself. This sparks a question; in memoir, where is the line between vulnerable and exposed? Does it matter? What about if you’re exposing others, or exposing yourself? Lord navigates this with a grace that can only come from a distance between the events of the book and her writing them down. The way she writes about her friends shows a deep love for them, and the way she writes about herself shows a level of self-intimacy she grows into throughout the memoir. The way she writes about her ex-partner is more reserved, while still honouring her emotions from that time. Lord can only give away others secrets when she gives away more of her own, which she does: the bare, bruised and healing. Notes on Heartbreak is a phenomenal study in how forgiving to be in a memoir, and toeing that line.
Separately, both books hold their own as witty, complex stories about what it means to be able to be alone after a white-hot love. Read together, they fill the spaces in between. Lord’s coarse vulnerability contrasts with Novak’s polish, and Novak’s novel reaches a satisfying conclusion, rather than Lord’s memoir, which doesn’t feel finished, only ended. Both authors weed through tense life events with tender humour and gritty optimism, a testament to their debut works. Whether you’ve recently experienced a relationship breakdown or not, these debuts from Novak and Lord invite and impress.
Em Readman is a nonfiction writer from Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia. They've been published in Aniko Press, the Suburban Review, Bowen St Press, Baby Teeth Arts and others, and recently won the Hunter Writer's Centre Blue Knot Foundation Award. She is a former editor of Glass magazine, and makes a good paloma.