‘I am beginning to suspect there are no absolutes at all.’

With the annual splashing of slogans across social media platforms, we see the passing of International Women’s Day.

Lorrie Moore’s writing is a score, punctuated by the staccato of wit and pithy social insight. Her words read like poetry, but lack the intemperance that is so often the sole accompaniment of such literature.

Dolly Alderton is the internet’s cool aunt - at the Sunday Times literally, where she is the paper’s resident ‘agony aunt’, answering readers’ queries on love, friendship, families and everything in between. On social media she is heralded as the author you just have to read as a young woman navigating your twenties, initially thanks to the publication of her memoir,

I implored the gods: Please, let me live.

‘I tried to communicate this insight but I failed - it fell flat from my mouth. I began to wonder if the only way to meaningfully communicate with others was through writing.’

‘Does it get easier?’

‘Much.’

You were promised a mitigation of pain, yet you remain the legacy of an ache. It still hurts to move sometimes. There is a fear so consuming you embody it; you are the apotheosis of dread itself.