There are two kinds of people who read The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan.
The first: people in their early twenties who highlight every other sentence because “OMG this is literally me.”
The second: people in their late twenties (or beyond) who quietly nod along and think, “Oof. This was me.”
Either way, it hits.
Keegan’s posthumous collection , a mix of essays and short stories, was famously published after her sudden death in 2012, five days after graduating from Yale. Which makes reading this book feel like flipping through a time capsule built by someone who almost got to live the life you thought you’d have at 22. It’s beautiful. It’s haunting. It’s also sometimes aggressively Ivy-League-in-its-own-head, but that’s part of its charm.
Keegan was a columnist, and you can tell. Her nonfiction pieces hum with that just-graduated energy: big opinions, mild panic about The Future, and the wild, messy love people have for their friends when they’re all still within a five-minute walk of each other.
Her viral title essay, The Opposite of Loneliness, isn’t just about romantic love. It’s about the weird electricity of belonging, the late-night dorm talks, the stolen cafeteria plates, the “see you tomorrow” that you don’t even realize is precious until it’s gone.
Other essays like Even Artichokes Have Doubts (about students selling out to Wall Street) and Stability in Motion (about her unreliable car) are thoughtful without being preachy. Keegan doesn’t write like she has it all figured out. She writes like someone desperately trying to figure it out in real-time. And honestly? That’s way more relatable.
Keegan’s short stories are hit or miss, which is normal for any young writer, let alone one who didn’t get a full career to sharpen her claws. But when they land, they really land.
Stories like Cold Pastoral and Reading Aloud showcase her eye for awkwardness, those tiny social gaps where people misread each other or say just a little too much. Her characters are messy. Insecure. Lonely, even in a room full of people. You know… human.
Is The Opposite of Loneliness perfect? No. It’s very Yale. It occasionally flexes too hard on its own intellect. But it’s also deeply sincere, wildly self-aware, and unafraid of feeling things at full volume.
Keegan’s writing is a reminder that ambition doesn’t have to look like a LinkedIn post. That success isn’t always linear. And that it’s okay (maybe even necessary ) to romanticize the parts of your life that feel small while you’re living them.
If you’ve ever stayed up too late talking about what you really want out of life… this book will feel like an old friend.
An old friend who wrote you a letter. And then left it behind.
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