Love in Exile is a memoir about love and an exploration of types of love in modern society, centred around Shon Faye’s own experiences not just of love and sex, but also ideas of motherhood, addiction, friendship, and religious love. Taking the idea that love “in exile”, for those not in the mainstream of love, might give space to consider love far more broadly, she describes her own experiences and combines them with sociological and historical thought to explore the topic in chapters that function like mini essays.
I think a lot of people will come to this one on the back of Faye’s powerful previous book, The Transgender Issue, and it offers something quite different, with its themes focused on areas of her own experience. This means that it has some really great bits exploring what it means to be a trans woman attracted to men and the state of modern dating for women who are into men, and it feels in conversation with other recent books on the latter, bringing important trans and queer thoughts into that conversation. As someone for whom these conversations around modern heterosexual dating aren’t relevant, I enjoyed Faye’s insight, but it was probably less impactful for me than it would be for women dating men.
Other chapters broadened ideas of love and how love interacts with other elements of life too, like addiction. The chapter on friendship looked at the position of friendship in society and how this can differ between queer and non-queer people, offering a good space for everyone to reflect on their own friendships and how they treat these in their lives. Due to the fact Love in Exile is a combination of memoir and more of an essay style, there’s always going to be gaps or areas that could’ve been covered or mentioned (any kind of dating beyond heterosexual, polyamory, etc), but Faye’s perspective on the areas she covers is witty and interesting.
Fiendfully Reading 
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