Friendships are amazing things, they have the power to shape someone’s life, and many influence who we become. Every now and again a book comes along that truly depicts what it is like to be amongst the throws of a great friendship and we think we have found a few that do just that. We’ve also spotted one that explores the language within female friendships and one that takes us on a journey of friendships though our lifecycle.
Let’s get started…
Living The Dream by Lauren Berry
Living The Dream is a sharp satire of modern British life. It features Emma, who should be a writer (but works in corporate advertising) and Clem, just back in London from New York, who is on the path to becoming a successful screenwriter (but works in a bar and lives with her mum).
Both women navigate the challenges of dreams and aspirations vs. reality, of having the guts to take a risk vs. selling out. Amid the big questions, Emma and Clem also find themselves faced with life’s little challenges: how to look happy at work, what to do with undesirable colleagues, how a hen party can go horribly wrong and what (not) to wear at a ‘well-ness’ spa.
Invincible Summer by Alice Adams
Inseparable through university, Eva, Benedict, Sylvie and Lucien graduate into an exhilarating world on the brink of the new millennium. Eager to shrug off the hardships of her childhood, Eva breaks away to work at a big bank. Benedict stays behind to complete his PhD in Physics and pine for Eva, while siblings Sylvie and Lucien pursue a more bohemian existence. But as their twenties give way to their thirties, the four friends find their paths diverging as they struggle to navigate broken hearts and thwarted dreams. With every summer that passes, they try to remain as close as they once were, but this is far from easy. One friend’s triumph coincides with another’s disaster, one finds love as another loses it, and one comes to their senses as another is changing their mind. It’s a novel about finding the courage to carry on despite life not always turning out as expected, and a powerful testament to love and friendship as the constants in an ever-changing world. Invincible Summer is a dazzling depiction of the highs and lows of adulthood and the greater forces that shape us.
Before Everything by Victoria Redel
End of sixth grade they made it their official name. It was a joke one afternoon but they liked the way it sounded. Permanent. The Old Friends. This way, the five girls agree, it’s just a fact. And ours forever. Anna, Molly, Ming, Caroline, Helen: the Old Friends.
Since adopting their official name aged eleven, they have seen each other through careers, children, illnesses, marriage, divorce, addiction, fame, fall outs. But now, Anna, a fiercely loved mother and friend, and the Old Friends’ glue is diagnosed with cancer again, and this time, tired of recoveries and relapses, pitying looks and exhausting regimes, she simply says: no more.
As her health declines, the politics of the still lived in world merge with memories of the past while each Old Friend tries to accept the truth of what is happening: they are losing someone they cannot imagine life without. Some will fight her decision, some will accept it, but all will rejoice in a life fully lived.
You’re the Only One I Can Tell by Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen has explored the way we talk at work, in arguments, to our mothers and our daughters and now she turns to that most intense, precious and potential minefield: women’s friendships. Best friend, old friend, good friend, new friend, neighbour, fellow mother at the school gate, workplace confidante: women’s friendships are crucial. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist or confessor. She can also be the source of pain and betrayal.
From casual chatting to intimate confiding, from talking about problems to sharing funny stories, there are patterns of communication and miscommunication that affect friendships. Tannen shows how even the best of friends, with the best intentions, can say the wrong thing, how the ways women friends talk can bring friends closer or pull them apart, but also how words can repair the damage done by words. She explains the power of women friends who show empathy and can just listen; how women use talk to connect and to subtly compete; how fears of rejection can haunt friendships; how social media is reshaping relationships.
Exploring what it means to be friends, helping us hear what we are really saying, understanding how we connect to other people, this illuminating and validating book gets inside the language of one of most women’s life essentials – female friendships.
The F Word by Lily Pebbles
The F Word is a debut book by blogging sensation Lily Pebbles (you can check out her blog here) who is one of the pioneers of the industry. She’s amassed a massive league of loyal followers of her blog and self-named YouTube channel (which you can find here) for content that covers a range of beauty, style and advice. The anticipation for her book is huge.
If there’s one piece of invaluable advice for women and girls of all ages, it is that there is nothing more important than creating and maintaining strong, positive and happy friendships with other women. In a culture that largely pits women against each other, Lily Pebbles wants to celebrate female friendships…all strings attached! If her 1998 diary is anything to go by, female friendships are incredibly complex and emotional but they’re the mini love stories that make us who we are. For many women, friends are our partners in crime through life; they are the ones who move us into new homes, out of bad relationships, through births and illnesses. In The F Word Pebbles sets out to explore and celebrate the essence of female friendship at different life stages and in its many wild and wonderful forms.
Enjoy!