‘I began to suspect that Justine didn’t feel about me the way I felt about her when the restraining order arrived. Maybe she needed time. Maybe she needed space. Not less than two hundred metres at any given point, as it happens.’
So starts The Beginner’s Guide to Being Alone. Elroy Pitt leaves Melbourne and a failed marriage to start again in Brisbane. He reasons that when you change cities you need to learn to do things from scratch. Just as you do when you break up with someone. It is, of course, never that easy.