How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship

by Eva Hagberg Fisher

A luminous memoir about how friendship saved one woman’s life, for anyone who has loved a friend who was sick, grieving, or lost—and for anyone who has struggled to seek or accept help

Eva Hagberg Fisher spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always temporarily. Then, at age thirty, an undiscovered mass in her brain ruptured. So did her life.

That first brain surgery marked the beginning of a long journey. When her illness hit a critical stage, it forced her to finally admit the long-suppressed truth: she was vulnerable, she needed help, and she longed to grow. She needed true friendship for the first time.

How to Be Loved is the story of how an isolated person’s life was ripped apart only to be gently stitched back together through friendship, and the recovery—of many stripes—that came along the way. It explores the isolation so many of us feel despite living in an age of constant connectivity; how our ambitions sometimes pull us apart more than bring us together; and how a simple doughnut, delivered by a caring soul, can become the essence of what makes a life valuable. With gorgeous prose shot through with joy, pain, fear, and the secret truths inside all of us, Eva writes about the friends who taught her to grow up and open her heart—and how the relentlessness of suffering can give rise to the greatest joy. 

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Friendship, Biography Memoir, Relationships, Audiobook, Biography

1 pages, Audio CD

First published February 5, 2019

About the author

Eva Hagberg’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Wallpaper*, Wired, and Dwell, among other places. She is the author of HOW TO BE LOVED: A MEMOIR OF LIFESAVING FRIENDSHIP (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Feb 5, 2019), and holds degrees in architecture from UC Berkeley and Princeton as well as a PhD in Visual and Narrative Culture from UC Berkeley.

Reviews

[Valerity (Val) · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship

A rather uniquely written memoir about a woman who has a difficult time letting people get close. She finds herself an addicted alcoholic from trying to chill out and fit in, then later has to go to groups to get free of it. But it’s at the groups that she makes her first real friends of her life, Allison is the main one, and she’s much older. As time goes by, and they talk a bit and she gets to know Allison, she feels herself opening just a bit to the idea of letting her in. They get along so well, and they are so good for each other, it’s not long before she feels herself opening more.

Then Allison shares with Eva that she’s ill with cancer, that it’s come back again and it’s likely terminal this time; she just wanted her to know since they have become close. They rely on each other. Eva for Allison’s mature advice, helping her stay sober and teaching her about friendship. Allison for Eva’s help when she was having bad days from chemo or radiation treatments and needed Eva’s assistance. This is a good book about friendship and learning how to ask for help and accept it. Sometimes that’s the hardest part of all, just admitting you need someone’s help. I was glad I read it. My thanks for the advance electronic copy that was provided by NetGalley, author Eva Hagberg Fisher, and the publisher for my fair review.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 240 pages
Publication: Feb 5th, 2019

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[Linden · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poor little rich girl Eva—from European boarding school to Princeton to grad school at Berkeley, with plenty of sex, drugs, and alcohol along the way. Then she gets sick—really sick. Several surgeries, and there is still something wrong; could mold allergies be the cause? Doctors offer a variety of diagnoses— yes, women who are ill are often marginalized and their symptoms dismissed. She heads for Sedona to escape molds with Lauren who, after staying for 3 weeks, finally telling Eva she has to get back to her life in Seattle. Eva marries someone who seems like a saint when she’s desperately ill. His parents offer their home, but the guest room in the basement is too moldy, so she takes over their bedroom for a month until they gently mention that they’d like it back. The friend she met at an AA meeting, Allison, mentions that Eva is “nothing if not self- centered,” which summarizes my impression of this author and her memoir.

[Nupur Govila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone walked into my heart and wrote my story for me to read! All the words that have been floating around in my subconscious found their existence in this book. I have hardly ever been so overwhelmed by a book, maybe because it held up a mirror to my life. Beautifully written and with such simplicity and honesty, it moved me to tears at points. Kudos to the author! Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for this wonderful book.

[Travel Writing · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not write this lightly.

Writing a memoir has to be as close to carving your own heart out and laying it out for public consumption. Which is one reason I love memoirs. A chance to slip on another persons experience, or a small part of it, and feel around for what this life would have felt like. To drop into deep compassion for another human's lived experience.

how to be loved a memoir of lifesaving friendship...does not do what it says in the tin.

It is a very long story about a woman who has inexplicably maneuvered people into tending to her while she offers debris in return. I kept awaiting the narrative arc, the AHA moment, for the moment I could fall in love with this narrator.

Instead, from page one to the last, all I thought was, she is hollow.

In 231 pages, she doesn't grow, change, expand, or reflect at all. There is nothing here. Is this a humble brag on how to get people to do your bidding while you do the absolute minimum and deploy victimhood?

The one sentence that gave me hope and felt like it could hold a moment of reflection came too late, on the last page.

Illness taught me how to do separation and divorce without needing to have grace. I was sloppy, and messy and self-absorbed and single-minded and intense...

As was this entire book...graceless, sloppy, messy, self-absorbed, single-minded and intense...

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish this memoir had been more about the friendship between Eva and Allison and less about...Eva's chronic selfishness. I spent most of the time reading about how so many people loved her, commented on her social media, showed up to help, etc. while scratching my head wondering HOW and WHY. She comes across so unlikeable and horrible to people that I am hoping it is a writing failure that neglects to truly show the reader what a wonderful, kind person she is deserving of all of this incredible friendship and acts of compassion.

[Sherri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was torture to read. I was halfway through it and there was still virtually nothing about the “friend.” This is a whiny memoir by a spoiled, rich white woman who is totally self-involved and annoying as hell. Just like the book.

[Katee · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was well written. But OMG, I'm not even sure she understands how unlikeable she was, and still is. While I feel for her because of her multiple illnesses, she comes across as just a horrible (to the point of sociopathic) woman. She seems to be saying she was so horrible before her illnesses because she was pushing people away, but it seems to me she always used everyone and everything (sex with anyone and everyone, drugs, alcohol).

I know a lot of truly kind, decent people who have had to survive similar trials and have never had the supportive friends that she had. It is interesting what draws so many people to her. I don't get it.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eva Hagberg Fisher writes one of the most beautiful memoirs I can remember - the prose is a joy to read as Fisher probes the depths of her independence and hard emotional shell that prevented her from enjoying deep friendships and romantic love. It is a book about the discovery of vulnerability through illness and the willingness to be human with others in order to attract and sustain love.

[Rhea · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about illness. The friendships in it are adjacent to the woman navigating her illness. My beef with this book is how it was marketed to be about meaningful friendships and it was more of a deep dive into the author’s insecurities and how she learned to let people help her. I imagine many people will love it, but for me, it could have been an article.

[Kelly Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author obviously writes well, but the book quickly dissolves into a self-absorbed tale of living in excess, choosing more excess, latching on to others when drowning without valuing them aside from what they give her, etc. This book makes me thankful for libraries.

[Liesl K · Rating 1 out of 5]

The things I do for my book club!

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

OUCH- this one got to me. I was mostly swayed by the beautiful cover and my desire to read up on other people's friendship, so I had no idea where Fisher was going to lead me. She details her journey into sobriety and then into sickness, just after befriending a much older woman (in her 60s to Fisher's 30s) who is already dying of metastasized breast cancer.

I knew her friend, Alison, would die and yet I was still not prepared. She had such influence over Fisher's life and was a constant while she went through her own brush with death, having to endure first brain surgery and then heart surgery for two separate issues that just happened to hit her in the same span of time. While also learning how to be sick and both request and accept help from her friends, she also found and fell in love with her husband and became her own health care advocate as, in recovery from her heart repair, her immune system flairs and she has to prioritize getting well for good.

It's a quick read and a good lesson for anyone, healthy or otherwise, reminding us that we can't make it through this life alone.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Everything that we deal with is the biggest thing.”

[lori light · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wise teacher Ram Dass said once that “we are all just walking each other home.” This book is about the great act of saying that you don’t know what you’re doing, where you’re going, or why it hurts so much. It’s about learning when to ask for help and knowing when to surrender. Beautifully written; this is a vivacious tale of the author’s pathway of healing her physical and emotional being.

[Amy S · Rating 1 out of 5]

i love memoirs but this one was just not for me. do not understand all the 5 star reviews.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to ask for help.”

I found this read to be impactful. Although I didn’t connect to some of the elements of Eva’s story, I believe she created a memoir that reached a lot of the inner feelings I have that I wouldn’t know how to put into words. I think it shed light on a lot of thoughts and emotions that people have and just don’t want to say out loud. There’s an inherent vulnerability in sharing our judgments and connecting with the part of ourselves that we don’t want to see. I believe, at times, the slew of details may have taken the reader out of the underlying story, but they also serve to reflect the chaos that Eva faced.

I think this read will connect with anyone that has struggled with illness, diagnosed or undiagnosed, and with pushing people away when you need them most. At its core, it reminds us how, even in the most trying of times, friendship can be steadfast and healing.

Thanks Eva for sharing your story.



Some quotes that stood out to me:

“‘Well… the thing is, I’m not here to fix myself … For me, I just want comfort. I want to go where it’s warm.’” (8)

“Because I was so consumed with the need to produce and perform and do a good job and be a star, I’d lived with a fundamental disconnect between my actual body and my controlled experience of my body. My body was failing and falling apart and I had learned that I could always push it just one more inch. One more day. One more performance.” (95)

“I could not imagine a time in which I hadn’t felt like this, or a time in which I wouldn’t feel like this. I felt a deep intuition that if I could get this nausea to end, I needed to end. For the first time in my life, I understood the desire to die. For the first time, I understood that living could be more painful that dying.” (96)

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to ask for help.” (127)

[Vishal Katariya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars. A beautiful, beautiful book. Please read it if you can.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a place for bootstraps memoirs. This is not one of those. How to Be Loved reminds us how much we need to need and be needed if we want to experience all that it is to be human.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't a story about one friendship in which Eva learns how to be loved, which it seems some expected when they picked up this book. But it is a memoir about learning to be loved through the friendship that others extended to her and her ability to come to understand this. It's sad that it takes something like a crisis in our own bodies to realize that we deserve love and are loveable, with every one of our warts in tact. One of my favorite reflections was when Eva listed out all of the reasons she thought she is unlovable but realizing, through Allison's love for her, that these were exactly the reasons she is lovable. And at the same time, realized that all of these things could be said about Allison, whom she had seen as better than herself, as well. The rawness in Eva's writing related to her illnesses and the candor that she wrote about her state of mind brought much to the surface for me. After 3 months of post surgery blood work following major liver surgery, then waiting for the year mark for a follow up scan, and the impact that had on me as the time drew nearer, there was much I could identify with in her re-telling. The friendships that I came to realize and my own ability to be vulnerable with those friends and learning to ask for help meant that I could identify with Eva's experiences. But even without those similarities, there is much here that we can all lean into about being a friend, accepting our vulnerability, and learning to be loved. Thank you, Eva.

[Stephanie Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows Eva, the author, through multiple changes in her life. Whether it be through medical, sexual orientation, relationships, friendships, sobriety, etc, we all face them throughout our lives and Eva was no different. The thing that she had that some of us may never find was a true friend who was like her other half, Allison.
It's so hard in life to find even one true friend that you know is your kindred spirit. Eva and Allison were that way, and Allison in many ways, saved Eva. Allison's passing was something that they all knew was inevitable due to the severity of her illness, but that didn't make it any easier when it happened. Eva had to learn how to go on in her life, and she also became ill herself. This book follows her throughout her life including all of this time period, as well as many years following Allison's death while she is faced with overcoming her own illness.
I feel like at points the book dragged on for me, although I think the story of her life is interesting and a great story to tell. I guess I just thought it would be different based on the way I interpreted the description. The book was by no means terrible, it just didn't always keep me wanting more.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to the author and to Netgalley for an advance copy of this book. I looked forward to reading it, as I am fond of friendship and memoirs and memoirs about friendship. This book chronicles several challenging years in the life of the author. The aftermath of an intense childhood where high expectations ultimately led to some personal addictions, resulted in the journey to be sober and the pivotal moment where she met Allison, her guide and mentor. Once sober she started noticing significant health issues and that's where the reader gets to see the power of friendships. Her friends support her through many years of treatments, recovery, new flare ups and eventually, after a harrowing desert journey seeped in despair, some concrete medical answers.
I was interested in the journey for answers and I hope the author remains healthy. At times I skimmed past the darkness. I felt like there was no hope. In fact, after finishing the book I felt quite drained. The friends who brought light and humor to the story were appreciated.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, @hmhbooks for the free digital copy to review. All opinions are my own.

On the Episode 195 of All the Books, Rebecca Joines Schinsky talked about this book, and like serendipity, my approval from @NetGalley came through!

While I think some people will find this book a little dry and slow-moving, I loved every page of it. Having similar feelings about friendships and connection, I related to that portion of her story very much. But my real love for this book came when she wrote about her personal experience with being sick. As many of you know, I lost my mama to cancer so it was so valuable for me to read about someone's personal experience dealing with illness, pain, and their thoughts and feelings while enduring their suffering.

There were so many takeaways from this book for me: what it means to be a friend, how to accept (and sometimes ask for) help, surrendering to your life looks and how that may look differently to others, and endurance. It was beautifully written with metaphors that captured my mind and emotions; it won't be a book that I soon forget.

[Lilithcarter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you Netgally for this one Here is my review

I have mix feelings about this one.
It’s well written as a whole. But nothing outstanding. I like some chapters better than others mostly because her use of punctuation helps you get the pace of the emotions either slow or chaotic. Which is always nice to find.
In the other hand I didn’t feel engaged in her story. She’s so self absorbed, self centred she pushed people away all her live then suddenly she has a plethora of good old friends??? Some people she was supposed to be closed to disappear from the book. Never hear from her mum or dad after she married even when she really needed them instead she moved in with her in-laws.
She really annoyed me and I just couldn’t relate to her at all she is aware of her attention seeking and her lack of social skills which was good as refreshing that’s why I gave it 2 stars and not one
I felt bad for Allison’s dog. Does anybody know what happen to him?

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, lovely. I think it would have been stronger, structurally, as a series of less-connected essays, but that's mostly because of the last quarter of it (which sort of seemed to lose the plot) and it's only really a minor quibble. Well written, and lots of good insights about trauma and relationships and self-acceptance.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An honest, intricate and enthralling narrative of the challenges that Eva Hagberg Fisher has journeyed through, in both health and relationship. I found this book to be a gentle reproach at times, in that I could identify with the struggles it describes. However, it was mostly filled with encouragement, and came across as a genuine account of the love that friendship can instil in us.

[Eliza Nolte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I felt like I was inside Eva’s head and shared many of her feelings and experiences. It is thought provoking and honest. For anyone who has struggled with connection and true intimacy this memoir will speak to your soul. I wanted to hug or be hugged by so many of the special people in Eva’s life. Allison! Wow, what gift she was.

[Dan Seljak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend. A powerful and compelling book about what it takes to get better, both in health and in friendship. Unlike some memoirists, Eva does not pretend to have all the answers, tackling subjects with a highly relatable humour and sensitivity. I finished it in two days.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The synopsis sounded really good, and poor Fisher has been through so much — tough childhood with multiple stepparents and so many health problems (brain rupture, mild sensitivity etc) but somehow for me, the story fell flat.

[blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is going to be the year of memoirs for me. I really took to this book, specifically the parts that traced Hagberg’s struggle with accepting love in her childhood and, instead, turning towards academic validation. Her writing on illness and death both devastated and comforted me. Hagberg’s story grows much bigger than the blurb portrays, and it was such a beautiful first read of the year.

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“If I didn't know how to fix it, I didn't want to be with it. It had never occurred to me to go deeper into pain instead of immediately trying to pull someone out. To sit in the darkness, in the vast landscape that is the abyss of pain and fear and suffering that illness, or tragedy, brings.”

“Desperate for the love that I believed success would give me, I made what seems now would be nonsensical choices.”

“I felt braided into a set of beliefs about myself: that I was unknowable, that I was unlovable, that I was fundamentally wired to be alone… For all of my reading about it, infidelity in practice was a way for me to carve out my own space in the world, to remind myself that I existed. It opened up the world for me, to a sense of hidden chambers and secrets. Pockets of decision and experience and choice that I stitch together to create some sense of solid ground.”

“Fiction-memoir gives us a way of trying on moral selves.”

“When it comes to illness, individuals become exhausted. The group thought — that larger collective made up of ever-shifting parts — it’s inexhaustible… I didn’t want to be inspired by a rhetoric of toughness. Too much of our culture tells us not to make big deals of things, to quietly lick our wounds, to retreat.“

“What I learned from having a tiny strip of my heart burned off is that I don’t have to know what the help looks like to deserve it. I don’t have to be numb to be brave.”

“Her death was not narratively necessary; it did not and will not teach me anything. It was her life that had.”

[Andrea Trenary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so so hopeful for this book. But I found the author (since this is a memoir) just really unpleasant and unsympathetic which is really odd given the memoir topics. But that’s just the way it felt the whole book. I cared so much more about her friend Alison and I wonder what happened to Sadie.