Arrangements in Blue

Deeply moving... A study of love - platonic and romantic, lost and found - Amy's memoir demonstrates the power of music on forming a self. * i-D, Books to be Excited for in 2023 * A beautiful, painful, liberating book. Amy Key writes with such tenderness and insight about a life without romantic love at its centre, exacting as to its impoverishments, exultant over its many and unexpected riches. -- Olivia Laing, author of Crudo Amy Key writes with rare integrity, courage and style about the pursuit of love - it's somehow both consoling and provoking, and a beautiful and necessary book. -- Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent A gorgeous manifesto for a solo life, the power of music and friendships and a reckoning with the possibilities of love and fulfilment. -- Sinead Gleeson, author of CONSTELLATIONS I was moved, surprised and deeply impressed by Arrangements In Blue, an exquisitely rendered interrogation of romantic love and how we need it or don't. I didn't realise until reading Amy Key's candid and sometimes elegantly brutal writing how badly I had felt the absence of this perspective in the neverending discourse around relationships and coupling. A seriously beautiful and important work I feel lucky to have encountered and which will change how many think about love in all its iterations. -- Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation In Arrangements in Blue Amy Key finds a language, searing in its depth and honesty, for desire, shame, grief and, crucially, for compassion, for the peace that comes of holding on and letting go in the same instant. -- Kayo Chingonyi, A Blood Condition Profound and poetic, vulnerable yet brave, I devoured Amy Key's memoir about love, loss, memory and hope. An incredible writer, a stunning debut. -- Lisa McGee, creator of Derry Girls There is a whole life pulsing within these pages, written with both clarity and eloquence, a glittering brightness that glints like stars in a navy velvet sky. A book to be read in astonishment and in admiration. Bewitching. -- Doireann Ni Ghriofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat An exquisite book whose beauty sweetly stung me. Amy writes just like Joni sings - her voice is disarming, immersive, sunlit, charged with ecstatic feminine power. -- May-Lan Tan, author of Things to Make and Break Arrangements in Blue took my breath away. Amy Key has the uncanny ability to distil a feeling into an image of total beauty and clarity; the language is crystalline, the book as a whole radically tender. Even in the process of reading it for the first time I knew it would be a book I would return to again and again. -- Sophie Mackintosh, author of Blue Ticket Amy Key's extraordinary Arrangements in Blue isn't merely a commentary on Joni Mitchell's Blue, but something bolder, more personal and shape-shifting, in line with Joni's own art in that it takes no starting point for granted. It makes itself up on its own terms. An intimate, absorbing inquiry of what self-care means to a life, and how to go forward when you put the map of romantic attachment to the side. -- Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World From grief to anger to full-throttled joy, Amy Key hits every note of feeling with perfect pitch. Arrangements in Blue grows out of a poet's obsession with Joni Mitchell's iconic album, but at its heart this book is a brave and brilliant exploration of how one woman lives both alone and alongside romance. An absolutely gorgeous work. -- Heather Christle, author of The Crying Book I love Amy Key. -- Lauren Laverne