We strategy, as the older proverb says, and God laughs. But the majority of us don’t find it all that funny when items go wrong. Most of us desire love, a good home, good function, and happy children. Many of us was raised with parents who produced these things look not too difficult and assumed we’d get them, too. So what do you do if you don’t? What now ? when you feel you’ve messed it all up as well as your friends seem to be doing just fine?

For Christina Patterson, it was her job as a journalist that kept her going about The Art of Not Falling Apart through the fluctuations of life. And then she lost that, too. Fantasizing of revenge and irritated by self-help books, she decided to do the type of interviews she experienced never completed before. The resulting conversations are surprising, touching and frequently funny. There’s Ken, the first person to be publicly fired from a FTSE-100 plank. There’s Winston, who dropped through a ceiling onto a crimson coffin. There’s Louise, whose baby was significantly ill, but who still worried about being excess fat. And through it all, there’s Christina, eating too many crisps as she tries to get the pieces of her life.

The Art of Not Falling Apart is a joyous, moving and sometimes shockingly honest celebration of life as an adventure, one where you ditch your expectations, raise a glass and prepare for a rocky ride.