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Friendship: A Novel Paperback – July 7, 2015
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A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year · A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice · Named a Best Book of the Year by Vol. 1 Brooklyn and The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Emily Gould's debut novel is a searching examination of a best friendship that is at once profoundly recognizable and impossible to put down.
Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years, but now, at thirty, they're at a crossroads. Bev is a hardworking Midwesterner still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe that derailed her career. Amy is an East Coast princess, whose luck and charm have, so far, allowed her to skate through life. Bev is stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of temping, drowning in student loan debt, and (still) living with roommates. Amy is riding the tailwinds of her early success, but her habit of burning bridges is finally catching up to her. And now Bev is pregnant.
As the two are dragged, kicking and screaming, into real adulthood, they are confronted with the possibility that growing up might also mean growing apart.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateJuly 7, 2015
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.61 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-101250070481
- ISBN-13978-1250070487
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gould has created the kind of friendship that is not shallow, silly, or a plot sideline, but private, deep, and more real than almost anything else. It's enough to make your <3 sing.” ―Annalisa Quinn, NPR
“A wry, sharply observed coming-of-age- story for the post-recession era.” ―People
“A vivid exploration of the missed connections and overwhelming isolation of modern urban life ... Compulsively readable.” ―Heather Havrilesky, The Los Angeles Times
“With Friendship, Gould establishes herself as a distinctively contemporary literary voice. Her dialogue resounds, and her dark humor gives texture to the prose. And though Friendship focuses on young women, readers need be neither young nor female in order to enjoy it....This is a very human story for any of us who have ever been jealous of a friend or wished our friends were more jealous of us.” ―Grace Bello, Christian Science Monitor
“A scintillating debut novel . . . No threat of veils here: just the biting, brilliant exploration of a modern female friendship.” ―Megan Labrise, Kirkus Reviews
“More than an exploration of friendship, this novel is about what happens when the things we take for granted slip away and we are forced to come up with new ways of being . . . Gould does a fine job capturing the women's frustrations, big and small, and the ways in which their friendship serves both as a hindrance and a means to maturing.” ―Shoshana Olidort, The Chicago Tribune
“Friendship, a slim, sometimes piercing novel, is a sharply observed chronicle of the inequality inherent in even the most valued friendships.” ―Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post
“As Gould exposes [Amy and Bev's] messiness--their fights, mortifying Gchat convos, acts of self-sabotage -- she almost dares you to judge them. But the specificity of their struggles (peanut butter soup for dinner, anyone?) and Gould's hyperaware voice lend the story of their friendship poignance and shades of relatability. A-” ―Stephan Lee, Entertainment Weekly
“Set in hipster Brookly, former Gawker editor Gould's latest centers on Bev and Amy, 30-year-olds struggling to be grown-ups in a world where moving back home while working for peanuts is often the only course. It's a wry, sharply observed coming-of-age story for the postrecession era.” ―People
“There's a difference between mere adulthood, which is legally defined, and being a grown-up, which is fuzzy and subjective. For the characters in Gould's funny and affecting debut novel, this difference is sharply felt . . . The novel's depiction of the dynamics of friendship--how there's often affection and admiration mixed with envy and competition--feels authentic.” ―Naoko Asano, Maclean's
“Friendship is interested--almost single-mindedly so--in the friendship between Amy and her friend Bev, two women who are in the process of discovering that life as 30-year-old women in New York City is vastly different than it was as twentyish-year-old women in New York City. The poverty earned from a career in the publishing industry is no longer charming or noble; the string of half-assed relationships doesn't seem very romantic anymore . . . Friendship is refreshing in part because it's hugely uninterested in the men in Amy and Bev's lives; they're blurry figures, pushed over to the periphery to marinate in their monstrous desires or their bland hopes of commitment.” ―Paul Constant, The Stranger
“It's easy to melt into the lives of these women as they deal with that particularly modern problem: becoming an adult at the age of 30. And though stories about women's friendship are very on-trend these days--from Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be? to Girls to Broad City--it's hard to say no to another one, especially one as honest and lived-in as this one.” ―Sonia Saraiya, The AV Club
“In Ms. Gould's . . . often sharply observed first novel, Friendship . . . Amy and Bev have just crossed a microgenerational line into their 30s, and there's a self-conscious, faintly melancholy tone to [the novel]: the girls' sense of looking back on the turmoil (and, in Amy's case, hubris) of their swiftly receding 20s with both alarm and nostalgia, worried that things are starting to add up, that the clock is ticking more loudly now, that the arithmetic of their lives is changing . . . Depicting Amy and Bev in the third person gives Ms. Gould a measure of perspective on--and distance from--her characters, enabling her to depict their follies and foibles with a mixture of sympathy and humor. The novel form . . . also accentuates Ms. Gould's strengths as a writer.” ―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“[Friendship is a] very fine first novel . . . Most of us know honesty as a virtue, and fewer know it as a sneaky concept in the craft of fiction. The latter honesty is about eschewing cliché, mastering particular skills for making the reader feel confided in. The novel, or publishing itself, might be in jeopardy, but writing will live as long as there remains the distinct pleasure of being told an honest thing.” ―M. C. Mah, The Rumpus
“Gould is a gifted documentarian. The novel is filled with keenly observed details, especially about the outsize role that technology plays in her characters' lives. ‘Are those Google predictions real?' Amy asks at one point. ‘Do they work? They do, don't they. Okay, cool, another thing I have to start paying attention to so that my life can be fully efficient and optimized.'"―Nora Krug, The Washington Post
“Two young women try to create the glamorous lives they've imagined for themselves while talking on Gchat from their desks at their less-than-ideal jobs. Bev left her cool-sounding but dispiriting entry-level position at a Manhattan publishing house to follow her boyfriend to the Midwest. Bad move. Now she's back in New York, single again, and temping.” ―Kirkus (starred review)
“There is a sentimental delight in reading Friendship and its roller coaster ride of urban highs and lows . . . In the end, Gould draws a vivid and convincing portrait of a friendship--in all of its human misunderstandings, disappointments, and brokenness . . . It is no small feat to animate and chart the emotional fluctuations and subtle contours of female friendships on the page.” ―S. Kirk Walsh, The Virginia Quarterly Review
“Work--sustained creativity, the problems of receiving too much attention, too fast and too young, paycheques, temp gigs, what it all might add up to and protect from--is as much a theme of the book as friendship is. The novel has a disarmingly for-real sense of these kinds of women's lives, and features high-def, immersive verisimilitude about roommates, instant messages, storage units, job applications, buses, shirts, drinks and, largely, money; these are, of course, also the quotidian but hugely meaningful circumstances that create, maintain and end friendships, especially between women, especially in cities.” ―Kate Carraway, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“A savvy first novel that, in piercing prose, zeroes in on modern ennui and the catalysts that force even the most apathetic out of their complacency.” ―Booklist
“A sharp, sad, unforgiving (in a great way) and remarkably funny exploration of thirty-something female friendship.” ―Nerve
“Gould's novel is admirably, readably realistic--she knows these girls and the world they live in (including the omnipresence of technology and the way that it pervades relationships) . . . Gould nails the complex blend of love, loyalty, and resentment that binds female friends. It is worth reading for the richness of its details (at one point, Amy is overwhelmed by the desire to put an engaged coworker's wedding ring in her mouth), and it offers new insight into the experience of young women.” ―Publishers Weekly
“I read Friendship with great pleasure. Emily Gould re-creates with wit and insight the New York I know: a place full of fame and money that's not yours, where friends become family and lovers become ex-lovers, and the big questions about your life stay unanswered, and unanswerable, for a long time.” ―Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding
“Friendship is especially honest about professional insecurity and personal uncertainty, which makes it an especially funny novel. And Emily Gould's prose sounds so admirably up-to-the-minute because it so faithfully observes classical principles of transparency and directness.” ―Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision
“Friendship is a moving, focused, highly readable, very funny novel, told with a calming amount of perspective by a trustworthy, precise voice. It is intimate and insightful regarding two decades of life (early twenties to middle age), and on the topics of endurance (emotional, financial), relationships (work, platonic, romantic--human), and jobs (temp, Internet, freelance art) in New York City.” ―Tao Lin, author of Taipei
“Truth-teller Emily Gould hurls her heart and her mind into this hilarious, bittersweet tale of the urgent, everyday need for connection between women.” ―Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins
“The book . . . has moments of deep tenderness, spaces where the fundamental pain of being a non-affluent woman in a sexist capitalist culture is mitigated by the power of friendship and community. The confusion and woe the characters experience as they thrash around their tiny apartments and dysfunctional workplaces is funny and occasionally heartrending. In spite of how backwards some of the actions and beliefs of Amy and Bev seemed to me--or perhaps because of the backwardness--I found myself rooting for them.” ―Eli Schmitt, Full Stop
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Picador; Reprint edition (July 7, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250070481
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250070487
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.61 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,430,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,541 in Women's Friendship Fiction
- #40,906 in Contemporary Women Fiction
- #95,967 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Emily Gould is an author, journalist and the co-founder of a feminist publishing startup, Emily Books. She has written extensively for publications including the New York Times, London Review of Books, Guardian, The Economist, Slate and Jezebel, and since 2005 has run a popular blog at emilymagazine.com. She is the author of a collection of essays, And the Heart Says Whatever, and Friendship is her debut novel.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the writing style surprisingly well written and easy to read. They also describe the book as a pretty good read with great characters. Opinions are mixed on the storyline, with some finding it interesting and enjoyable, while others say it's rambling and obvious. Customers also have mixed feelings about the intelligence, with others finding it amazing and without merit.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the writing style surprisingly well written, easy to read, and quick. They also say the dialogue feels real and wonderful.
"...The scenes are fresh, the writing is beautifully unadorned, and the book has a lot of heart...." Read more
"...heart a quite simple story, but still very enjoyable and surprisingly well written." Read more
"...That being said, the writing was fine and I enjoyed how she presented the characters. I just felt as though the book could have been so much better." Read more
"...Several of the observations are pithy and witty. The writing is flowing and pleasant...." Read more
Customers find the book pretty good, fast, and compelling. They also say the ending leaves them hanging.
"...I found it utterly compelling for the author's utter cluelessness...." Read more
"...All in all, not only is this a romp to read, a novel that is great fun, it is also a beautiful and well constructed one with real literary merit." Read more
"...It's at itsheart a quite simple story, but still very enjoyable and surprisingly well written." Read more
"...A great summer read." Read more
Customers like the characters in the book.
"...The characters feel honest and new. Gould's eye for detail is excellent...." Read more
"...That being said, the writing was fine and I enjoyed how she presented the characters. I just felt as though the book could have been so much better." Read more
"...I had very little attachment to the characters and enjoyed most the life of the characters as New Yorkers...." Read more
"...Though the characters became fairly real, I can't say that their motivations struck me that way...." Read more
Customers are mixed about the storyline. Some find the story interesting, relatable, and engaging, with a nuanced depiction of life. They also appreciate the fresh scenes and New York setting. However, some customers feel the story is overrated, rambling, and boring.
"...The scenes are fresh, the writing is beautifully unadorned, and the book has a lot of heart...." Read more
"...two would-be writers in Brooklyn - is a thinly veiled cover for a thin story...." Read more
"...both the observations made by the characters as well as the nuanced depiction of life for someone who's made witty pop culture and meme commentary..." Read more
"I was very unimpressed with this book. I felt as though it had no plot and what little plot it did have was not even wrapped up at the end...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book intelligence. Some find it amazing, while others say it's without merit, nothing special, and didn't meet its potential.
"This book was not as good as I hoped it would be. At times, I had difficulty liking the characters, in particular Amy...." Read more
"...really only one honest thing to say about this novel and that is: it is very good. The characters feel honest and new...." Read more
"...totally without merit. Women everywhere should rise up anddemand that books about silly slacker women who can't get..." Read more
"...This book is awful." Read more
Customers are mixed about the content. Some find the book sweet, honest, and addictive, while others say the three women in the book are self-indulgent, dumb, and boring.
"This was good! Good character development, honest and authentic capture of the meandering ways of friendship, and in the end, you learned a few..." Read more
"...more years. The three women in this book are self indulgent, dumb and downrightboring...." Read more
"Hilarious and painfully honest in a way that will either disturb or delight you. Easy, entertaining read." Read more
"Ugh this was the most narcissistic book I have ever read, I had to stop. Stick to insulting people." Read more
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Regardless of both positive and negative hype, regardless of Gould's internet fame, there is really only one honest thing to say about this novel and that is: it is very good. The characters feel honest and new. Gould's eye for detail is excellent. The situation Bev and Amy find themselves in is both lifelike and culturally important. The scenes are fresh, the writing is beautifully unadorned, and the book has a lot of heart. I loved the friendship between these two women, and I was gratified by Gould's confidence in playing those major chords at the end of the book and letting their friendship triumph. It is harder to write a happy ending than a sad one.
All in all, not only is this a romp to read, a novel that is great fun, it is also a beautiful and well constructed one with real literary merit.
heart a quite simple story, but still very enjoyable and surprisingly well written.
That being said, the writing was fine and I enjoyed how she presented the characters. I just felt as though the book could have been so much better.
Top reviews from other countries
This book though, was disappointing. I was expecting so much more from the characters - instead they felt a little one-dimensional - the flaky, self-absorbed successful friend, and the kind but lost friend who can't seem to find her path. It was a decent book, but after everything else I have read (and loved) from Emily Gould, I expected a lot more.