7 Books About Women Who Put Friendship at the Center of Their Lives

Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash I have always found myself building extremely romantic friendships. Long hours lost to phone calls, text marathons, letters, no-reason gifts, the sharing of meals and secrets and small, tender intimacies. For whatever reason, it has always seemed apparent that my friendships—if handled with devotion and care—will outlast my romantic relationships. Through adolescence and early adulthood I put as much work into these bonds, often prioritizing them over my actual romantic relationships, and finding myself equally brutalized when they occasionally ended. Now that I am married, these same friendships provide additional outlets for the intimacy and joy that I'm also building at home with my partner, and I've spent countless coffee-fueled hours asking myself: why do we place so much pressure on spouses to fulfill all of our needs? Why not turn to a friend? This was the idea that inspired my novel Significant Others , which follows friends and roommates of twenty years as they grapple with change when one becomes pregnant following a one night stand. The women co-own a home, co-raise a dog, and so they ask themselves: why not co-mother this child? But before I was writing about unusually deep friendships, I was reading about them. Below are seven of my favorite stories that remap the location of friendship in our lives, pulling it from the margins and placing it front and center. We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman Is it possible to write a book about the death of your most beloved person that manages to be as hilarious as it is devastating? Catherine Newman's We All Want Impossible Things screams hard and clear: yes. Quite literally a celebration of life and friendship, the novel follows 45-year-old Ash as her closest friend Edi decides to move away from her husband and young son so that she can be near Ash in a hospice facility during the final days of her battle with cancer. Their lifelong friendship is the point from which their worlds pivot, and now Edi is choosing to come home to her best friend so […]