Book BFFs: 3 Books About Friendship

[image description: two young Black women, both holding books and smiling.]
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I think often about the role friendship has played in my life and how the best friends feel more like family. As someone who wasn’t born into the best family, having best friends who are my chosen family is deeply important to me.

As such, I love books that feature friendships prominently. Though sometimes the friendships in novels don’t seem realistic to me, or perhaps the friendships I value most don’t make good subjects for novels. I’ve read a ton of stories, particularly YA novels, where the best friends know every single little thing about each other and practically read each other’s minds. I’ve had the same best friend since I was 5 years old, so 25 years now, and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable saying that about him!

It’s not because we don’t talk every single day or because we live on opposite sides of the country. But rather that we’re both growing and changing, even as adults, and one of the things I admire most about Ethan is that he continues to surprise and delight me. He’s one of the few people I know who’s completely confident and unapologetic about changing his mind in light of new information. Though we obviously know a lot about each other from having been BFFs for so long, I think it would be selling us short as people if we claimed to know everything about each other.

So novels where the characters do claim to know everything about one another always get some side-eye from me. Not necessarily a bad review, just some skepticism in the friendship department.

Where I do think friendship is talked about super realistically, however, is in nonfiction. Both in memoirs of friendships and in books that study friendships as the primary relationship in a person’s life, I find more realistic and attainable depictions of friendship. What I read in these books feels true to me and Ethan, as well as the other handful of people I consider my best friends.

So here are three books about friendship that I’ve especially enjoyed.

Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship by Kayleen Schaefer

Synopsis:

From Girls to Parks and Recreation to Bridesmaids, the female friendship has taken an undeniable front seat in pop culture. Text Me When You Get Home is a personal and sociological perspective - and ultimately a celebration - of the evolution of the modern female friendship.

Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the '90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into Sex and the City spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of "I'm not like other girls" friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soul mate; and finally, the overwhelming love of a supportive female squad (#squad).

And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn't the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, businesswomen, doctors, screenwriters, and historians (a list that includes Judy Blume, Megan Abbott, The Fug Girls, and Kay Cannon), Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal, and work lives.

A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to - and makes the case for - the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.

I appreciated that this book is a social history of female friendships and blended scientific research with anecdotes from real people. While I do wish the book would have included male-female friendships (for selfish reasons since Ethan is, as you might have guessed by the name, a guy), I can understand needing to keep a narrow research purview. In terms of what friendships were covered, they were covered well.

Also, I have to admit I was drawn in by the title. When my family would tell me to text them when I got home, it came across as yet another way to baby me as an adult, or that they didn’t trust me not to drive like a fool or so something else stupid between their place and mine. They often felt the need to tell me that one life decision or another was stupid and I ought to do things differently, so I bristled at any attempt to control me, even the well-meaning ones. But as I got older, my friends started telling me to text them when I got home and it hit me differently: it wasn’t that they didn’t think I was going to do something stupid, but rather that the world is scary and no matter how careful you are things can happen to you.

Though I’m sure my family told me to text them when I got home because they cared, just like my friends cared, it hits differently when it’s coming from someone who doesn’t chastise or judge you. It’s different when it’s someone whom you’ve never doubted cares about you. It’s different when it’s someone on an equal, even plane with you and not someone who until you became an adult had power over you. That dynamic is important, I think. And it’s why when I say my friends are like family, I mean to say that they are my family in its ideal form, not as I have experienced family in the past. They both might care, but friends show it in a totally different way––one I welcome and am fortunate to experiennce.

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett

Synopsis:

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy’s critically acclaimed memoir Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth and Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined--and what happens when one is left behind.

I think it’s nearly impossible to be close friends with someone that you don’t admire and respect and that best friendship is impossible without those two elements. And yet, when you know someone well enough to call them your best friend, you probably also know that your BFF isn’t perfect. You’re likely intimately familiar with their flaws. You see them as a whole human being, not just the image they project to the majority of the world comprised of people who aren’t their best friends.

That’s why I loved this memoir so much. Lucy was dead by the time this book came out and Ann’s portrait of her and their friendship broke my heart. Not because it wasn’t honest, but because it’s so honest it’s painful. I think it takes a lot to admit publicly that a person they love has struggled unimaginably and didn’t always handle their hardship well.

I hope I never have cause to write a book or even an essay as painful as I’m sure Truth and Beauty was for Ann to write. But if I do, I hope I can write it even half as well.

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

Synopsis:

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.

Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls.

An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.

I thought this book about friendship was especially well done because it was actually written by two BFFs who had been besties for over a decade, which included several ups and downs. (And even a few trips to couple’s therapy.)

What I appreciated most about this book was that it talked about how to heal rifts and survive fights. All too often it seems like people’s reaction to difficulty in a friendship is to ditch the person, slowly phase them out of your life, or ghost them. But that puts such undue pressure on friendships because it implies that they need to be perfect to last. Meanwhile, there are a million resources on how to heal romantic relationships when there’s a rift and how to work past a fight. Those same resources should exist for friendships too. Working through a difficult part in the friendship should be the norm.

That’s not to say that every friendship is meant to last; I don’t believe that. But I do believe that for those special, one-of-a-kind friendships, it’s better to work through issues than to let it go without giving it the old college try. I was inspired to pick up Big Friendship when I was having a pretty big fight with one of my besties last summer. We ultimately decided to talk it out and apologize and we’re both glad we did! I would’ve had a much harder time being vulnerable and admitting that I missed her and navigating the conversation of healing if I hadn’t read Big Friendship first.

I highly recommend all of these books. They’d make especially great reads with your BFF!

If you’d like to buy copies of any of these, please use my Bookshop link. Doing so supports this blog and indie bookstores––a win-win!