Narrating Loneliness: Isolation, disaffection, and the contemporary novel

Abstract

This article focuses on the ways in which narrative accounts of loneliness in literatureproblematize current definitions of this important and yet underexplored determinant ofhealth. I argue that the prevailing conceptualization of loneliness in health research, witha general emphasis on social prescribing, obscures other dimensions of loneliness beyondsocial connectedness that also need to be accounted for in its definition. Drawing on nar-rative approaches to health and care and taking as a case study Santiago Lorenzo’s Span-ish novel Los asquerosos (2018), the article gestures toward a more political—rather thanexclusively subjective and relational—reading of loneliness. It shows how the novel’sexploration of loneliness as an ambivalent experience of tranquility and disaffection ques-tions whether there is any direct causation between loneliness and aloneness or social iso-lation, presenting loneliness not so much as a problem or a social pain in need of curing,but as a symptom of a larger structural crisis. The article also reflects on the ability ofliterary narratives to illuminate, discuss, and ultimately challenge the underlying dynamicsof loneliness, raising questions about how we understand these narratives and the type ofagency we attribute to them.