An invitation to rest in the mystery that there is no single route to fulfillment, but many—often contradictory, unpredictable, endlessly available.

Our lives are restless. Though we strive for meaning, we are often unfulfilled: our loves fail, our careers stall, and our purpose eludes us. We may temporarily ease our frustration by blaming our methods or embracing our limitations, and we may even embrace the self-defeating lie that we must discover the one, linear path for success in love, work, or life. In A Book of Consolation, Andrew Stark offers a liberating third way between self-abandonment and complacency, revealed through a simple mystery: for each road where someone found fulfillment, someone else walked the opposite path to the same end.

Drawing on literature, popular culture, philosophy, and more, A Book of Consolation invites us to appreciate, even marvel at, the possibility that the routes to love, success, and meaning are so various that even inverse lives can satisfy us. Stark holds up a series of opposing journeys for consideration—from the contradictory loves in modern romantic comedies, to the regrets of Dolly Parton and Ernest Hemingway, to the mindsets behind Tiger Woods and Richard Nixon’s success. In juxtaposing these lives, Stark expands our sense of what counts as fulfillment and what alternatives may be available when our own paths falter. Rich in possibility but without prescription, A Book of Consolation encourages us to navigate the frustrations of our finitude by cultivating a faith that the paths to fulfillment are far more pluralized—and often more contradictory—than we know.