What do you think?
Rate this book
Just Between Us
Empathetic, supportive and respectful...
Or competitive, manipulative and downright bitchy?
Or somewhere in between?
In Just Between Us , a host of Australia's best-loved female writers bare all on this age-old quandary:
Are female friendships all-natural and nurturing? Or are some more damaging than delightful? And most of all, what happens when female relationships go off the rails? And who is to blame? While falling in and out of romantic love is a well-documented experience, losing a friend rarely gets discussed. Which doesn't mean the pain is less – quite the opposite, as we discover in this extraordinary collection of heartfelt fiction and non-fiction works that put female friendship in the spotlight.
Nikki Gemmell looks at the hardwiring that keeps us bonded in tightly knit packs, but makes us feel oh-so-claustrophic in mothers' groups and at the school gate. Melina Marchetta reveals the peculiar shame of being overlooked for the high-status netball positions of Centre and Goal Attack. Liz Byrski conducts a forensic examination of her own friendship history, and finds some uncomfortable patterns. And Merridy Eastman pens a letter from Helena to Hermia from A Midsummer Night's Dream , which shines the light on one of literature's most famously dysfunctional female friendships.
Or competitive, manipulative and downright bitchy?
Or somewhere in between?
In Just Between Us , a host of Australia's best-loved female writers bare all on this age-old quandary:
Are female friendships all-natural and nurturing? Or are some more damaging than delightful? And most of all, what happens when female relationships go off the rails? And who is to blame? While falling in and out of romantic love is a well-documented experience, losing a friend rarely gets discussed. Which doesn't mean the pain is less – quite the opposite, as we discover in this extraordinary collection of heartfelt fiction and non-fiction works that put female friendship in the spotlight.
Nikki Gemmell looks at the hardwiring that keeps us bonded in tightly knit packs, but makes us feel oh-so-claustrophic in mothers' groups and at the school gate. Melina Marchetta reveals the peculiar shame of being overlooked for the high-status netball positions of Centre and Goal Attack. Liz Byrski conducts a forensic examination of her own friendship history, and finds some uncomfortable patterns. And Merridy Eastman pens a letter from Helena to Hermia from A Midsummer Night's Dream , which shines the light on one of literature's most famously dysfunctional female friendships.
352 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2013
13 people are currently reading
286 people want to read
About the author
Maya Linden
6 books2 followersMaya Linden holds a PhD in Creative Writing/Literary Studies. Her creative and critical writing has been published in many local and international journals and magazines including Women’s Studies, Griffith Review, Hecate, Meanjin, Westerly, Life Writing and Australian Book Review as well as numerous anthologies.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 28, 2013
On the surface, a collection of fiction and nonfiction stories from nineteen different writers on the topic of ‘friendship’ sounds like it could be the stuff of a dull Year Nine English writing assignment. But it’s in the subtitle of 'Just Between Us' that the tension and purpose is revealed; ‘Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship.’ And then you only need read the foreword by Helen Garner to know that this is a very special book indeed, promising “a feast of things that women do not consider trivial.” Garner surmises; “that to examine with reverent attention the tiniest of human details is anything but a waste of time. It may even be essential to survival.” Indeed. And this book is about the little things from which big things grow – the silences and missed phone calls, a crackle of tension in the air and a gaze averted. Some stories are funny, others confessional; many of the nonfiction authors, especially, try to offer condolences and answers to sunken friendships, while others are willing to let questions go unanswered and friends untethered. In this book nothing is too small, all is worthy of examination. From those friendships that drifted into the ether, to those cut short by death. All are examined with the same weight. In the introduction, the books' editors promised that this anthology would “escape the simplicity of those often-seen caricatures of female friendship: the effortless ‘best friends forever’ and the bitchy rival.” And they deliver.
It’s often the end of a friendship that is examined in these stories. And Julienne van Loon inadvertently questions that in her nonfiction piece ‘In Broad Daylight’, about her last “real” female friend who lived a short, tragic life;
It is curious that friendship is most often written about after it has gone, as if death legitimises the discussion of what was previously too private or fragile a territory. Are friendships between women particularly private and fragile?
—‘In Broad Daylight’ by Julienne van Loon
It’s often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and that seems never truer than in the case of female friendships. This anthology has six fiction and thirteen nonfiction pieces – and some of the true stories come from surprising authors. Cath Crowley and Cate Kennedy have decided to don truth over fiction for their pieces, with glorious results. Lots of the stories sting a bit, because there’s universal truth in them and the authors are laying bare some of their deepest regrets and bad behaviour, and it was in these pieces that I saw most of myself;
I want to give you a reason but I can’t remember why I told. It wasn’t a mistake; I know that. I used your secret as a kind of currency but I can’t remember what it was I bought.
— ‘A Letter to a Lost Friend’ by Cath Crowley
Clementine Ford’s piece ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’ rings especially, uncomfortably true for me. I went to a private all girl school. I wore gingham. To this day if I have a particularly nasty gossip session with my best friend from high school, we shrug at our petty nastiness and blame it on the school environment that bred it in us.
There are girls who are never the victim, and there are girls who will always find themselves in that role. But in between, there are girls who pulsate between the two. So it was with me. I was the mouse. Sometimes I was the cat.
— ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’ by Clementine Ford
Other authors make delicious breadcrumbs of their stories, like Melina Marchetta’s ‘The Centre’, which is written entirely in epistolary email format between old high school friends rehashing an old debate over netball hierarchy … but which eventually reveals deeper hurts in one of their own, called Matilda. Even if I didn’t know (having heard Melina speak at a Penguin teachers function) that this was the beginning/trigger of a new book she’s working on (two words: Jimmy Hailer) I would want to follow wherever this story leads.
Sexuality and romance is also beautifully explored in some of these stories; it’s all part of the prism, and love often follows friendship. As the editors promised, there’s nothing cliché or deliberately titillating in such stories – unsurprisingly (to women, at least) there’s none of that ‘male gaze’ pillow-fighting during a sleepover stuff … it’s quieter in ‘Just Between Us’, runs deeper.
Miriam Sved’s fictional ‘One True Thing’ is about a woman who finds a collection of short stories written by one of her old school friends; one story clearly borrows heavily from their girlhood, and the sexual overtones colour her own memories of their past and have her desperate to reconnect and get to the bottom of what was fact and what was fiction for both of them. Francesca Rendle-Short dissects and vivisects in the nonfiction ‘Glossus’, on her marriage that eventually crumbled, and the little loves she held for the female friends along the way until she found ‘My Beloved’:
Memories are encoded in our bodies – the forgetting and remembering; they press and lift us into different shapes, change the colour of our skin. There is a kind of ecstasy thinking about what J gave me that night, I feel it in my bones: because she didn’t care what anyone thought, no matter who or what she was or wanted to be – which was none of anyone’s business anyway, she was quick to add. She kept holding my hand, kept dancing, and became even more provocative and free. She challenged them all to yell it again, to grow more furious than they already were. J was always very good with her voice.
— ‘Glossus’ by Francesca Rendle-Short
I would love it if Pan Macmillan Australia made another anthology, of Australian writers telling the truth about male friendships. Helen Garner’s foreword includes a conversation with a male friend about the break down of her female friendship, to which he replies “Blokes tend to shrug and barrel on through.” Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s oversimplified. I know that in reading ‘Just Between Us’ I felt a deep connection to all of the stories in some way, because they’re my story too – but I’d quite like to be surprised and learn something about male friendships that could also benefit from an anti-cliché short story anthology.
Here is a book that explores the shifting tectonic plates and little earthquakes that make and break female friendships. It is equal parts beautiful and uncomfortable, true and elusive … I found a bit of myself in every single piece, and after I finished reading I instantly wanted to pass it on to my friends so that they too could find themselves within the pages.
It’s often the end of a friendship that is examined in these stories. And Julienne van Loon inadvertently questions that in her nonfiction piece ‘In Broad Daylight’, about her last “real” female friend who lived a short, tragic life;
It is curious that friendship is most often written about after it has gone, as if death legitimises the discussion of what was previously too private or fragile a territory. Are friendships between women particularly private and fragile?
—‘In Broad Daylight’ by Julienne van Loon
It’s often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and that seems never truer than in the case of female friendships. This anthology has six fiction and thirteen nonfiction pieces – and some of the true stories come from surprising authors. Cath Crowley and Cate Kennedy have decided to don truth over fiction for their pieces, with glorious results. Lots of the stories sting a bit, because there’s universal truth in them and the authors are laying bare some of their deepest regrets and bad behaviour, and it was in these pieces that I saw most of myself;
I want to give you a reason but I can’t remember why I told. It wasn’t a mistake; I know that. I used your secret as a kind of currency but I can’t remember what it was I bought.
— ‘A Letter to a Lost Friend’ by Cath Crowley
Clementine Ford’s piece ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’ rings especially, uncomfortably true for me. I went to a private all girl school. I wore gingham. To this day if I have a particularly nasty gossip session with my best friend from high school, we shrug at our petty nastiness and blame it on the school environment that bred it in us.
There are girls who are never the victim, and there are girls who will always find themselves in that role. But in between, there are girls who pulsate between the two. So it was with me. I was the mouse. Sometimes I was the cat.
— ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’ by Clementine Ford
Other authors make delicious breadcrumbs of their stories, like Melina Marchetta’s ‘The Centre’, which is written entirely in epistolary email format between old high school friends rehashing an old debate over netball hierarchy … but which eventually reveals deeper hurts in one of their own, called Matilda. Even if I didn’t know (having heard Melina speak at a Penguin teachers function) that this was the beginning/trigger of a new book she’s working on (two words: Jimmy Hailer) I would want to follow wherever this story leads.
Sexuality and romance is also beautifully explored in some of these stories; it’s all part of the prism, and love often follows friendship. As the editors promised, there’s nothing cliché or deliberately titillating in such stories – unsurprisingly (to women, at least) there’s none of that ‘male gaze’ pillow-fighting during a sleepover stuff … it’s quieter in ‘Just Between Us’, runs deeper.
Miriam Sved’s fictional ‘One True Thing’ is about a woman who finds a collection of short stories written by one of her old school friends; one story clearly borrows heavily from their girlhood, and the sexual overtones colour her own memories of their past and have her desperate to reconnect and get to the bottom of what was fact and what was fiction for both of them. Francesca Rendle-Short dissects and vivisects in the nonfiction ‘Glossus’, on her marriage that eventually crumbled, and the little loves she held for the female friends along the way until she found ‘My Beloved’:
Memories are encoded in our bodies – the forgetting and remembering; they press and lift us into different shapes, change the colour of our skin. There is a kind of ecstasy thinking about what J gave me that night, I feel it in my bones: because she didn’t care what anyone thought, no matter who or what she was or wanted to be – which was none of anyone’s business anyway, she was quick to add. She kept holding my hand, kept dancing, and became even more provocative and free. She challenged them all to yell it again, to grow more furious than they already were. J was always very good with her voice.
— ‘Glossus’ by Francesca Rendle-Short
I would love it if Pan Macmillan Australia made another anthology, of Australian writers telling the truth about male friendships. Helen Garner’s foreword includes a conversation with a male friend about the break down of her female friendship, to which he replies “Blokes tend to shrug and barrel on through.” Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s oversimplified. I know that in reading ‘Just Between Us’ I felt a deep connection to all of the stories in some way, because they’re my story too – but I’d quite like to be surprised and learn something about male friendships that could also benefit from an anti-cliché short story anthology.
Here is a book that explores the shifting tectonic plates and little earthquakes that make and break female friendships. It is equal parts beautiful and uncomfortable, true and elusive … I found a bit of myself in every single piece, and after I finished reading I instantly wanted to pass it on to my friends so that they too could find themselves within the pages.
August 21, 2013
Female friendship is explored in this collection of fiction and nonfiction by some of our well known Australian writers. Many people will no doubt devour this book in huge gulps. That wasn’t the case with me. I found it better to read and digest in smaller bites, so maybe one or two in a day and then a break of a day or so before returning for another helping. Otherwise it felt to me all a bit much – rather like a gossip session which is not my favourite pastime. However, everyone will find their own way of dealing with this book. Some will no doubt love it and read it though all at once. It may even be that some readers will read some and then come back others at a later date.
Some of them are sad as friendships disintegrate and split apart, often over a seemingly harmless misunderstanding or lack of attention to maintaining the relationship or when death intervenes. I particularly enjoyed Good Neighbours by Jean Kitson, Letter to a Friend by Cath Crowley and The Girl Who Got Smaller by Jane Caro but there were others that struck a chord as I contemplated friends who had been misplaced over years or those friends who for whatever reason become simply too much hard work.
While I could relate to some of the stories and essays, I would have liked to have seen more of the joys and positives of female friendship. Once again found myself bemoaning the fact that we couldn’t write about friendship without using the other dreaded f word. I wondered too why the cover only had had two young women looking very similar. Older women have friends too, often of long standing, and that might have been good to recognise.
Some of them are sad as friendships disintegrate and split apart, often over a seemingly harmless misunderstanding or lack of attention to maintaining the relationship or when death intervenes. I particularly enjoyed Good Neighbours by Jean Kitson, Letter to a Friend by Cath Crowley and The Girl Who Got Smaller by Jane Caro but there were others that struck a chord as I contemplated friends who had been misplaced over years or those friends who for whatever reason become simply too much hard work.
While I could relate to some of the stories and essays, I would have liked to have seen more of the joys and positives of female friendship. Once again found myself bemoaning the fact that we couldn’t write about friendship without using the other dreaded f word. I wondered too why the cover only had had two young women looking very similar. Older women have friends too, often of long standing, and that might have been good to recognise.
July 14, 2013
It’s not uncommon for women to invest more in our friendships than our romantic relationships, yet the cliche of the BFF—that kindred spirit you meet in kindergarten and remain thick as thieves with no matter what shit storms life throws at you—is a rare reality. While from the outside female friendships may appear simple, they are, more often than not, rife with subtext. Through personal essays and short stories, nineteen Australian women writers share their experiences of friendship.
As you might expect, there’s a fair amount of bitching and gossiping with some of the writers clearly in need of a good vent and you can’t help thinking that there’s definitely another side to some of the stories. However, there are some guilty admissions too. Maya Linden’s non-fiction piece, ‘The Complementarity Principle’ begins: ‘It didn’t end because I’d done something unimaginably terrible. I had, but that’s not what ended it.’ And while this and many other pieces begin with the promise of intrigue and the sense of a scandal brewing, they ultimately reveal themselves as highly personal and heartfelt.
As a reader, you feel you are being spoken to in confidence with many of the writers showing a side of themselves that is normally hidden from view. Clementine Ford, who never fails to crack me up and who’s voice normally booms from the page, reveals a very different side of herself in ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’, where she talks about her experience of being sent halfway around the world to boarding school when she was just eight years old. In fact, if I hadn’t read her name beneath the title, I wouldn’t have picked it as her writing.
Though some pieces are lighthearted, they are largely stories of friendships in decline, with the writers sifting through their memories trying to understand what went wrong. Because what is abundantly evident is that these relationships, complex and imperfect as they be, are important.
There were many moments when I screamed: YES! I’ve been there! I know that feeling! And I wanted to reply with my own stories. For a long time after I finished the book, I found myself reflecting on my own friendships, particularly ones I have been neglectful of.
This is definitely one for the girls, and I must confess, I absolutely tore through it. The experience of reading it was like catching up for drinks with the girls, having a bit too much wine and swapping stories, and it reminded me that it is something I should do in real life more often.
I review all the books I read on my blog. Please do drop by sometime: www.margotmcgovern.com
As you might expect, there’s a fair amount of bitching and gossiping with some of the writers clearly in need of a good vent and you can’t help thinking that there’s definitely another side to some of the stories. However, there are some guilty admissions too. Maya Linden’s non-fiction piece, ‘The Complementarity Principle’ begins: ‘It didn’t end because I’d done something unimaginably terrible. I had, but that’s not what ended it.’ And while this and many other pieces begin with the promise of intrigue and the sense of a scandal brewing, they ultimately reveal themselves as highly personal and heartfelt.
As a reader, you feel you are being spoken to in confidence with many of the writers showing a side of themselves that is normally hidden from view. Clementine Ford, who never fails to crack me up and who’s voice normally booms from the page, reveals a very different side of herself in ‘Girls Who Wear Gingham’, where she talks about her experience of being sent halfway around the world to boarding school when she was just eight years old. In fact, if I hadn’t read her name beneath the title, I wouldn’t have picked it as her writing.
Though some pieces are lighthearted, they are largely stories of friendships in decline, with the writers sifting through their memories trying to understand what went wrong. Because what is abundantly evident is that these relationships, complex and imperfect as they be, are important.
There were many moments when I screamed: YES! I’ve been there! I know that feeling! And I wanted to reply with my own stories. For a long time after I finished the book, I found myself reflecting on my own friendships, particularly ones I have been neglectful of.
This is definitely one for the girls, and I must confess, I absolutely tore through it. The experience of reading it was like catching up for drinks with the girls, having a bit too much wine and swapping stories, and it reminded me that it is something I should do in real life more often.
I review all the books I read on my blog. Please do drop by sometime: www.margotmcgovern.com
April 24, 2017
Though I didn't love every single story, the overall theme of this book is really interesting and important. I related to many of the stories, which has caused me to reflect a lot on my own female friendships.
September 2, 2013
It is most often the end of friendship that is explored in Just Between Us. In the editor's introduction they share that the impetus for this book came from a discussion where they came to recognise the absence of stories about "a slow breakdown, or an unexpected break-up, of a relationship with a close female friend", despite the universality of the experience.
Just Between Us then is a collection of both fiction and non fiction pieces about the "complexities of our...important female friendships; about their ongoing difficulties, their sudden complications, their endings" from twenty Australian women writers. Varying in tone from the confessional to the pragmatic, the lighthearted to the contemplative, some of these essays and short stories will resonate more strongly than others, but all offer a glimpse into the complicated intimacy of female friendship.
I have had friendships fade with time and distance as well as those that have ended abruptly for reasons I no longer remember, or never knew in the first place. Friendships that I have abandoned to protect myself, others for no good reason as all. To know that my experience is not unique, as illustrated in contributions like Jane Caro's The Girl Who Got Smaller and Clementine Ford's Girls Who Wear Gingham, is somehow reassuring. Of all twenty pieces, I found Nikki Gemmell's non fiction contribution 'What We Do', particularly insightful, despite its simplicity.
Just Between Us is an honest and engaging anthology reflecting on the joys and sorrows of friendship. Share it with a friend.
Want to read
March 31, 2013Is it a little premature to say this is going to be on my favorite of shelves? I mean considering who is contributing to this the odds of it being on my "I wish I could unread" is pretty much zero. Just saying.
October 26, 2014
I really liked this book after initially avoiding it due to my fears that it would be about the pseudo-intellectual hypocritical feminist type authors. Alas it is not! The compiler and introduction is written by Helen Garner a women I'm sure I would dislike in relation to her stance on feminism, yet bizarrely I tend to like her books. All the stories in this book, (it's a short stories collection by women both fiction and nonfiction), are great! Even the fiction stories are as entertaining as the nonfiction ones. I seem to be going on a nonfiction binge at the moment, yet this has not dented the diet too much. The story by Maya Linden was the only real down point. It was some what compelling to read, and as she has said it is a work of nonfiction presumedly about her then I feel well within my rights to think of her as a disgusting human being. She seems to almost endorse cheating, and seems incapable of gaining in moral integrity that accommodates any empathy for other people. She seems like a cruel person, that indulges in this cruel side, especially when in the company of other women. I think she sounds like a psychopath and someone I want to avoid. Perhaps her NONFICTION accounts of herself are more fiction than I realise? Otherwise I can't find anything good to say about this women. I don't feel I've missed any enigmatic points in her rather basic narrative.I also only skim read the story by Eastman due to wanting to be more familiar with A Midsummer Night's Dream before reading her post-modern expansion of this tale.
Really loved this book and ALL the other tales in it. Maybe because it talks about what I'm missing. Friendship. And I'm not afraid to say it and look desperate. My ego is not so deluded that I feel the need to obfuscate the missing pieces in my life to adhere to the social protocol of attracting by exaggerating one's own reality. That stuff is realm of mere mortals. I seem to be not like this.
Really loved this book and ALL the other tales in it. Maybe because it talks about what I'm missing. Friendship. And I'm not afraid to say it and look desperate. My ego is not so deluded that I feel the need to obfuscate the missing pieces in my life to adhere to the social protocol of attracting by exaggerating one's own reality. That stuff is realm of mere mortals. I seem to be not like this.
August 28, 2013
Just Between Us is a compilation of short stories – both memoir and fiction – by some of Australia’s favourite female authors. These stories are about friendship and most of them relating the tragic tales of how many female relationships painfully breakdown.
I love the concept of this anthology. I’ve often wondered what exactly has gone wrong in my own relationships with female friends and reading this collection has made me feel better knowing that I’m not alone in my confusion.
There’s a great variety of stories in this book ranging from stories about first friendships to those which have spanned decades. There are fictional accounts of high school dramas to real life tales of how motherhood and time affects friendship. I enjoyed reading the stories by authors I love and I plan to check out some other works by the authors I was less familiar with.
This is a well thought out compilation with enough variety that I think all readers will find something to relate to. Definitely one I’m going to be lending to my mum.
I love the concept of this anthology. I’ve often wondered what exactly has gone wrong in my own relationships with female friends and reading this collection has made me feel better knowing that I’m not alone in my confusion.
There’s a great variety of stories in this book ranging from stories about first friendships to those which have spanned decades. There are fictional accounts of high school dramas to real life tales of how motherhood and time affects friendship. I enjoyed reading the stories by authors I love and I plan to check out some other works by the authors I was less familiar with.
This is a well thought out compilation with enough variety that I think all readers will find something to relate to. Definitely one I’m going to be lending to my mum.
March 31, 2014
I absolutely loved this collection of heartfelt fiction and nonfiction stories from some of Australia’s best writers, they made me laugh, cry and dragged up some emotions that I thought I’d stashed away forever, they also transported me back to some of the painful memories that I once felt at the loss of a cherished friendship but most of all in a way made me feel slight envy knowing that I have never really experienced such a true, deep, meaningful and long lasting friendship as described in so many of the pages in this book.
I in no way felt that this book portrayed the bitchiness that is compacted so neatly in some woman and I applauded those women who contributed their stories. I will recommend this too many of my female friends and it will hold a special place on my bookshelf; it will definitely be a book I will read again. These stories have not only made me realise that I am not alone in my bewilderment at the abnormality of some friendships but also that friendships mean such different things and often so little to others.
I in no way felt that this book portrayed the bitchiness that is compacted so neatly in some woman and I applauded those women who contributed their stories. I will recommend this too many of my female friends and it will hold a special place on my bookshelf; it will definitely be a book I will read again. These stories have not only made me realise that I am not alone in my bewilderment at the abnormality of some friendships but also that friendships mean such different things and often so little to others.
March 13, 2015
Female friendship is a fascinating thing, methinks. This book made me feel like less of a freak and I realised many of my experiences were quite normal. I would love to discuss this in a book club full of women, to compare notes, show our battle scars and have a good old cackle at ourselves and each other. I would also like a few of my male friends to have a read... I would be very curious about their experiences and how they differed from mine. A few stories didn't quite hit the spot for me, but the ones that did were SPOT ON. A great, courageous bunch of stories from some pretty darned talented women. I recommend, and please, if you read this book, let m know, because I could love to have a good old chinwag about it.
December 30, 2015
A collection of fiction and non-fiction stories from Australian women all about female friendship. These stories highlight how common, but how infrequently discussed, the challenges and complexities of these relationships are. Made me pause to reflect on the significant friendships throughout my life - what sustained them and why they ended. As a mother to a young daughter it also left me thinking about what awaits her and how to support her to develop and navigate friendships in her life.
January 18, 2014
This one will be shared with my daughters, sister and friends in the knowledge that they too will find themselves in these pages. The complexities of female friendships and the joy, bewilderment and sorrow explored in these essays and stories will give moments of understanding and enlightenment to many. Read and then share and then enjoy your own friendships for what they are.
September 4, 2015
Some really honest, insightful writing (both fiction and non-fiction) about friendship between women: the joys, the nightmares, the passion, the regrets. A lot of the pieces are really strongly grounded in the Australian landscape too, which adds another layer of emotion. Really important writing on a rarely discussed subject.
December 26, 2017
I found this book very thought provoking and made me pause and think about the many friends who have come and gone over the years. Some of the stories will stay in my mind forever. I really loved the mix of fiction and non-fiction stories and being introduced to some writers I have never read before.
June 28, 2013
Interesting and familiar! Some stories better than others some are very funny good way to analyse female relationships I kind of wanted there to me more stories. Was a quick read.
November 12, 2015
This is such a pleasure to read. The "stories" are fiction and non-fiction, by Australian writers I enjoy and by some I have not read until now.
January 4, 2017
Lauren Rosewarne's piece was wonderful. I go back to this again again.
January 3, 2020
I didn't realise how much I needed to read this book until I began - even the foreword was excellent. Encapsulates brilliantly the complexities of friendship between women in a way I didn't know I needed. Validating and beautifully done.
January 12, 2015
A bit hit and miss, a bit repetitive
January 18, 2018
Most of the stories were interesting, and some struck a chord in my memories. However, it was rather "too much of the same" to be really enjoyable.
March 25, 2017
‘It is difficult to write about fractured friendships with other women, not simply because of the personal, painful loss, but because the subject of women’s friendship is so ideologically charged.’ Liz Byrski.
This thoughtful, seamless anthology is a blend of fiction and non-fiction essays exploring the good, the bad and the ugly in female relationships. Some stories have a literary feel, while others are more direct, but all of them were a joy to read.
Helen Garner’s foreword summed up this book perfectly. She writes:
‘There is a great variety of tone in the essays, wild laughter as well as tears, and plenty of juicy overlap, especially in the matter of stopping speaking to one’s friend, a thing that recurs countless times, bringing comic contortions of outrage and an all too familiar pain’.
The topics in Just Between Us are diverse: nüshu (a fascinating, ancient women’s-only Chinese language), internet trolls and even an alternative ending to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – written in email format. However, it was the recurring theme of aborted female friendships that I found most intriguing and engaging. I admired the honesty and courage of the authors who shared their deep and personal anecdotes. It couldn’t have been easy for them to do so.
Many writers mused over reasons as to why they lost their best friend, but Liz Byrski’s discussion of deep acting (where ‘we work to change how we feel in order to make the relationship work’) resonated with me the most. She connects research by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to her own friendships with a simplicity that makes perfect sense. (And just between you and me, Liz’s friend’s audacious behaviour, in Liz’s own home I might add, made my jaw drop!)
As the individual stories unfold throughout the book, a great deal of compassion is shown to the Ex Best Friends (EBFs). Thoughtful consideration is given to both sides. I am yet to develop such balanced feelings about the sudden termination of a close female friendship late last year, but these stories have gone a long way in helping me gain a sense of closure over ‘unfinished business’, and an alternative outlook as to why things went wrong. The balanced feelings will hopefully come with the passage of time.
While reading, I couldn’t help but think of the friends who owned the other side of the story in Just Between Us. What would their reaction be if they read the book? Would old wounds be healed, or would scars deepen? Three years have passed since this book was first published. I wonder…
And it is to those ex-best friends that the final paragraph of the book is dedicated:
And last but not least, we give a comradely nod to our ex-best friends; wonderful, worthy jousting partners who must have their own stories to tell, and without whom this anthology could not have been possible.
This thoughtful, seamless anthology is a blend of fiction and non-fiction essays exploring the good, the bad and the ugly in female relationships. Some stories have a literary feel, while others are more direct, but all of them were a joy to read.
Helen Garner’s foreword summed up this book perfectly. She writes:
‘There is a great variety of tone in the essays, wild laughter as well as tears, and plenty of juicy overlap, especially in the matter of stopping speaking to one’s friend, a thing that recurs countless times, bringing comic contortions of outrage and an all too familiar pain’.
The topics in Just Between Us are diverse: nüshu (a fascinating, ancient women’s-only Chinese language), internet trolls and even an alternative ending to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – written in email format. However, it was the recurring theme of aborted female friendships that I found most intriguing and engaging. I admired the honesty and courage of the authors who shared their deep and personal anecdotes. It couldn’t have been easy for them to do so.
Many writers mused over reasons as to why they lost their best friend, but Liz Byrski’s discussion of deep acting (where ‘we work to change how we feel in order to make the relationship work’) resonated with me the most. She connects research by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to her own friendships with a simplicity that makes perfect sense. (And just between you and me, Liz’s friend’s audacious behaviour, in Liz’s own home I might add, made my jaw drop!)
As the individual stories unfold throughout the book, a great deal of compassion is shown to the Ex Best Friends (EBFs). Thoughtful consideration is given to both sides. I am yet to develop such balanced feelings about the sudden termination of a close female friendship late last year, but these stories have gone a long way in helping me gain a sense of closure over ‘unfinished business’, and an alternative outlook as to why things went wrong. The balanced feelings will hopefully come with the passage of time.
While reading, I couldn’t help but think of the friends who owned the other side of the story in Just Between Us. What would their reaction be if they read the book? Would old wounds be healed, or would scars deepen? Three years have passed since this book was first published. I wonder…
And it is to those ex-best friends that the final paragraph of the book is dedicated:
And last but not least, we give a comradely nod to our ex-best friends; wonderful, worthy jousting partners who must have their own stories to tell, and without whom this anthology could not have been possible.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews