This is a short book. It will be even shorter, as it happens, than Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, and I am writing it, for you, in at least the same spirit as he wrote that for you: "And you, good soul who suffer as he did, draw comfort from his sorrows; let this little book be your friend, when by fate --or through your own fault--you can find no more intimate companion."