Together, Closer: Stories of Intimacy in Friendship, Love, and Family - Softcover

Frazzetto, Giovanni

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349410755 ISBN 13: 9780349410753

Publisher: Piatkus, 2017

Synopsis

A deeply felt book that explores intimacy through the stories of eight relationships, from a leading neuroscientist and author of How We Feel.

What is intimacy and why do we need it?

Intimacy is that moment when our true identity is revealed to another, when traumas, fears, and ambitions are shared. Whether in friendship, love or family, intimacy redresses itself constantly, demanding we raze emotional barriers and discover who we really are.

Through the ordinary stories of eight relationships, neuroscientist Giovanni Frazzetto has woven an extraordinary narrative of togetherness. He shares the details of romantic partners trapped in a long cycle of attraction and rejection, a single woman who finds herself deep in a fictional relationship with a boyfriend she has invented out of frustration with her love life, and a couple absorbed in a years-long clandestine affair. But intimacy can also extend beyond romantic encounters: coping with the loss of a loved one, dealing with overbearing or emotionally distant parents, or celebrating the joys and comforts of our dearest friends.

In Together, Closer, Frazzetto unravels the components of intimacy in all of these relationships, illuminating the mysteries, challenges, and pleasures of intimacy through a brilliant mix of storytelling and science.

About this title

About the Author

Giovanni Frazzetto was born and grew up in the southeast of Sicily. He studied science at University College London and received a Ph.D. from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. Author of Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love, Frazzetto is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin.

Review

“Together, Closer examines the way humans relate to each other across a spectrum of relationships from parent-child to platonic friendships and, of course, romantic love. . . .  The reader reads the stories of others’ lives but, of course, we are really appraising our own. Every now and then—and where this happens will depend on your intimate style—the text seems to silver into a kind of mirror. It is unnervingly accurate the way this works, and triggers an interior scrutiny. In these characters, Frazzetto is really showing us ourselves, helping us to look at what we usually look away from.”
—The Guardian
 
“An ambitious project . . . Giovanni Frazzetto marries science with art, the most recent discoveries of neuroscience with human stories about intimacy. . . . A clear love of art and science shines from the book.”
—The Irish Times

“[Frazzetto] ponders what intimacy really is, what it means, and how it shifts and changes throughout a person's lifetime. . . . Regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual relationships, or between a parent and child, each tender story shows a different aspect of intimacy, including the passion one first might ascribe to the word ‘intimate.’ . . .  The author leaves the door open for readers to make their own comparisons and conclusions. Science and anecdote intertwine in this close examination of the bonds that bind humans together.”
—Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Piatkus
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0349410755
• ISBN 13: 9780349410753
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256