Friendship

by Emily Gould

A novel about two friends learning the difference between getting older and growing up

Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years; now, at thirty, they’re at a crossroads. Bev is a Midwestern striver still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe. Amy is an East Coast princess whose luck and charm have too long allowed her to cruise through life. Bev is stuck in circumstances that would have barely passed for bohemian in her mid-twenties: temping, living with roommates, drowning in student-loan debt. Amy is still 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 Bev and Amy are dragged, kicking and screaming, into real adulthood, they have to face the possibility that growing up might mean growing apart.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Friendship, Chick Lit, Adult Fiction, Adult

258 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Emily Gould was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland. She went to Kenyon College for two years, then completed her B.A. at Eugene Lang College (The New School for Liberal Arts) in New York City. She has lived in NYC - first in the East Village, then in Greenpoint, and now in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn -- since May 2001.

Since moving to New York Emily has had a number of jobs, including work at Hyperion Books and Gawker.com. In 2008 she completed Alison West's 200 hour yoga teacher training and in 2010 she completed her basic back care yoga certification. She runs Emily Books, a feminist publishing project (www.emilybooks.com).

Besides yoga, she loves going to museums especially PS1, birdwatching and karaoke.

Reviews

[Anita Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my God, that was seriously the worst thing I've read in a while. This got good reviews? Did I read the wrong "Friendship," by Emily Gould? Because what I read had God-awful, deplorable characters, a thin plot that made absolutely no sense, and a horribly abrupt and stupid ending. My eyes are offended, and I feel lied to by all the websites that called this a "must-read." I assure you, it is not.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

First let me please beseech you not to read the goddamn jacket copy, which is full of reveals. It also has an endorsement by my sworn enemy Tao Lin which is just as awful as any of his books and basically looks like notes he wrote to himself that he maybe thought he'd later craft into a real sentence. God I hate that guy.

Anyway, if you need a synopsis, just read this one from the Millions:

Emily Gould’s debut novel charts the friendship of two women who, at thirty, have been closely entwined in one another’s lives for years. Bev lives the kind of aimless life that’s easier to put up with at 23 than at 30. Amy has been coasting for some time on charisma, luck, and early success, but unfortunate decisions are catching up with her. A meditation on friendship and maturity in an era of delayed adulthood.

Not bad, right? Not bad at all.

Although many people seem to be perversely invested in Emily Gould's failure, I've talked elsewhere about how much I appreciate her and her writing, and I think she did a terrific job with this one. If you're a person who has followed her career, you can see the ways these characters are based on her own life, but they're good characters, well drawn and well personalitied. You can also see how a book like this comes out of right now, filled as it is with Twitter and video-blogging and the demands of our currant urban tech culture.

And I mean, look. The thing about Emily is that she and I lead rather parallel lives, putting me squarely in the ideal demographic audience for this. I relate to her characters because I relate to her, and I like her books because they are in many ways about my life too. I've seen Amy and Bev in all the places I live and hang out, I've had many of their conversations with my own friends. I admire their resourcefulness in the face of being broke in the city they're fighting to keep because I too am feeling that squeeze. I get teary reading their fights and the interior monologues that lead to and away from same, not because they're the stuff of literal despair but because they're emotionally honest and familiar. I feel shitty for their one-night stands and ludicrous bosses, for the times they follow the wrong boy or the wrong job, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other until they smack their face into the wall they've been doggedly pretending not to see looming. These are my same stubbornnesses, my same jealousies, my same foolhardy but intentional path. It hurts and it makes so, so much sense.

So is the fact that I liked this so much just solipsistic narcissism? Maybe. But that doesn't make me like it any less.

[Patrick Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Things were happening to her. They were bad things, but at least they were happening."

I'm a fan of Emily Gould, kind of just in general. I like her internet writing and I liked her collection of essays, and I think she has one of the most interesting businesses around, one that's built on taste and heart and smarts.

Which is why I'm not surprised that this is such a good novel. Funny, of course, but also really honest and true and moving. I'm not embarrassed to say that I teared up a little at the end (on a plane, no less). I said early on in reading this book that it reminded me a bit of Lucky Jim, and there's some of that there throughout, though it's ultimately a more sincere and (is this word terrible to use in a book review?) generous novel. (Side note: Isn't it funny how Lucky Jim and much of Kingsley Amis's work is kind of sexist (sometimes very sexist) and yet these days, the authors who seem to be best at his particular brand of novels featuring hapless and wonderful characters are all women like Kate Christensen and Emily Gould? What do you make of that?).

I read this book in about 6 hours, mainly on two flights and one kind of great lonely dinner in New York. It's a book that feels current and relevant and just very alive. I love how it embraces the way humans use technology today (there are many descriptions of texting, emailing, IMing, scrolling through Twitter, and just general fondling of smartphones). I love the New York it describes and the brilliant skewering of the start-up and blogging worlds. The dialog is well rendered and sounds like people I know talking. It is also, in a subtle way, very well plotted. But I think what most people are going to love about the book are its two heroes, Bev and Amy. The book is, after all, the story of their friendship, and it was almost instantly a story I wanted to read. As it progressed, I found myself sucked into their troubles -- Bev's pregnancy, Amy's career troubles -- and was sort of blindsided by how much I cared about them. I'd read a bunch more novels about these two characters, Patrick Melrose-style. Yeah, I'd be into that.

[Leanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but it was just nothing special. It wasn't dark and stormy and serious the whole way through, but it also wasn't really funny. The writing was smart enough to elevate it above the "chick-lit" label, but it wasn't good enough to wow me (and I was expecting more after reading some of Emily Gould's articles and stalking her Twitter account). The focus was on the two main characters, Amy and Bev, for pretty much the entirety of the novel, but I never really felt like I knew (or liked) them. I'm all for unlikeable characters, and often root for even the most despicable ones if they're well-developed, but I just found Amy and Bev to be so...blah. I would say I'm the target demographic for Friendship, and I could certainly identify with some of the girls' motivations, fears and selfishness, but I guess there was just something about the whole thing that didn't connect with me.

I did love the theme - there are not nearly enough books out there about friendship (at least not literary ones), and it was so refreshing that there was no knight in shining armour to swoop in and save Amy or Bev from their perpetually worsening life issues. The commentary on Internet and phone culture is pretty spot-on. And there was certainly some growth in the characters by the end, which was necessary and appreciated.

Maybe I was just expecting too much? Maybe I just couldn't get over how entitled they were are times, at how someone can just not even look at their credit card statement and pay only the minimum balance yet continue to spend money recklessly. Ugh, I sound so lecture-y, and like I said, I can be incredibly selfish at times too, but a lot of it just bugged me!

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

After tossing aside Visible City because I was unable to work up any enthusiasm for its threadbare milieu—the domestic discontent of wealthy white middle-aged Manhattanites—for some reason I picked up Friendship, a novel about broke white millennial Brooklynites—hardly a neglected population in contemporary fiction themselves. Still, Friendship makes it clear that it's not just who you're writing about, it's how you're writing about them that makes the difference. Not everything has to seem so serious; you can get your point across just as well if you handle it lightly rather than making it obvious that you're trying to make A Major Point About How We're Living Today, and that light touch is something millennial writers seem to do much better than their Gen-X forebears. Obviously I'm generalizing here, but I'm just trying to say: In Friendship Emily Gould uses a scalpel rather than a weed whacker, and the result is both affecting and fun to read.

The plot isn't much to talk about; just two late-twenties female friends in Brooklyn and how they struggle to make something of themselves. But again, it's all in the writing. The characters were vivid and although I didn't particularly like them, I still became invested in what they were doing. Honestly, this was just a very enjoyable novel until it neared the end, at which point Gould seemed to work harder to impose a plot that would lead to a respectable ending. I wasn't as into that; it felt forced. Plus, for such young protagonists I was a bit surprised at the valorization of motherhood and the lack of interest in finding meaningful work—although I guess given the shitty job possibilities out there now, that element is realistic at least.

I knew going in that this was Gould's first novel, and I was honestly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading it. It was four stars until the ending started happening, at which point it dropped to three for me, but if you're thinking of reading this or are just looking for a smart novel that goes down easy, I would still recommend it.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking of how it evolved like an indie movie with Greta Gerwig and Miranda July, or a Carey Mulligan type. It takes some conventional tropes of fiction and edge-cuts it with less plot, and lots of inner dialogue, as well as tart conversations. The story could be a soap opera, if done in the prevailing decorous style. Instead, it focuses on the friendship of primarily two thirty-year-old women, Bev and Amy, who met at a job at a publishing firm. They both left there for different reasons, and remain close, until the relationship is challenged when one of them becomes pregnant after a one-night stand.

I hail the author for not having men come to the rescue (which is refreshing). The locus is on friendship, and a deeper exploration of what we want and need from each other, and from ourselves. It also examines how we mirror and reflect the people in life we choose as close friends. It also probes the external forces that bind us to convention while struggling to be authentic.

“…I’m talking about this weird vapidity that woman seem to aspire to…This kind of Us magazine editorial voice that infects people’s actual conversations and lives. Just fetishizing children and domesticity and making it seem like they are the…only legitimate goals women’s lives can have.”

Bev and Amy are struggling to create careers and find love. Amy, on her rise to the top in the blogging world, made some enemies, moved on to a different job, and remains unhappy in her work. She feels entitled to a more luminous career. Bev left graduate school in creative writing after a year, and is floundering in temp jobs, and ruminating about an old romance that went sour. A third party, Sally, complicates their solidarity, as does Sally’s husband, Jason. Sally and Jason represent that wealthy and “arrived” status that Emily and Bev have been striving for--or against.

It’s a swift, upmarket beach read, but not shallow. It removes the gloss and poof of shows like Sex and the City, which has caused a whole generation of young, single women to think that living in NYC is sexy and romantic. FRIENDSHIP demonstrates the often stressful, financially strapping, and lonely life of this glamorized city.

Contemporary and biting, Gould’s novel of women on the precipice is engaging and honest. Can a friendship at a crossroads toward maturity survive diametrically opposed points of view? Life choices, bonding, betrayals, and growing-up are challenges to Amy and Bev—“allies in a world full of idiots and enemies.”

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the preface of “Friendship” is a quote from Stevie Nick’s “Landslide” song: “Can I handle the Seasons of my life”…which could have been another title for this novel. It’s an interesting chic-lit book about a friendship between two young women trying to make it in NYC. What’s refreshing is that boyfriends are involved, yet they aren’t a focal point of the novel, nor of the women’s relationship. The novel spans the two women’s ages between the early twenties into the thirties. The author provides realistic portraits of living in NYC and trying to make it. Also, the author does show the “arrested development” of some singles during those decades of their lives. It’s a fast read. It’s a beach read with some thought involved.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) This seems like a young woman’s book (you can’t avoid comparisons with Lena Dunham’s HBO hit, Girls), but anyone can relate to themes of failure and disillusionment. It’s not your average chick lit.


Full review, originally posted at Bookkaholic:

For your summer reading pleasure, here’s a perfect book to take to the beach, on the train, or to the doctor’s office. It’s just right if you’re a 30-year-old woman, like me and like Gould’s main characters, or if you’re facing first-time motherhood; it’ll be an equally apt choice if you’re broke and questioning your career path, or if you’re unsure of what life is going to bring next and what your purpose in the world might be. In other words, although this seems like a young woman’s book, skirting the edges of the chick lit camp, I’d argue that the bittersweet tone and sly sense of humor will ring true for most people.

Still, the comparisons with Lena Dunham’s HBO hit, Girls, are both inescapable and accurate. However, you might think of Friendship as giving a picture of those characters five to ten years on. Best friends Bev and Amy are pushing 30 and have failed to achieve the professional and romantic success New York City seemed to promise back in their early twenties when, fresh-faced, they set off from home looking for adventure. When Bev Tunney left Minnesota, her dream was to become a writer, but now, recovering from a disastrous relationship, she has deferred her MFA program and temps for agencies instead.

It was as a temp for a publishing company, in fact, that she met Amy Schein, a Jewish princess from suburban Maryland. Amy (who is pretty obviously a stand-in for Gould here) was an online gossip columnist before moving to Yidster, a pop culture website designed to appeal to young, hip Jews in the City. Anyone who has ever worked a mindless job will recognize Amy’s “sense of great urgency – not because she was eager to get to work, but because she was eager to get through her fifteen minutes of work and then get on with her life.” One day, unable to face another day of composing moronic ‘Yid Vids,’ she quits. Unfortunately, this means that she is unemployed just when her artist boyfriend is leaving for Spain and her landlord decides to raise the rent. “She still couldn’t quite believe that this was where she’d ended up.”

I could relate to these two penniless, disillusioned friends’ feelings of envy and incomprehension when faced with “people who seem to know what their spot in the world is and inhabit it comfortably.” Two such people are Sally and Jason, a married couple for whom Bev and Amy housesit one weekend. They’re only about ten years older, but they seem to have it all together: a gorgeous home out in the countryside, successful artistic careers, and money to show for it. For Bev and Amy, it’s a glimpse of everything they think they will never attain. Except Sally and Jason’s relationship is not as perfect as it appears. Their lives become intertwined with Bev and Amy’s in rather strange ways. I won’t give too much away, except to say that the Sally and Jason subplot, to me, felt formulaic and unnecessary.

The book can lose its way a bit when the two main characters are apart: a long flashback to Bev’s attempt to live with boyfriend Todd in Madison, Wisconsin is tedious; and Amy’s return to Maryland hampers the pace. I liked it best when the BFFs were together (either in real life or online) and trading banter. Although I was slightly annoyed by all the instances of “dude” and “um” in their speech, it does sound authentic and natural. Their language also points to the fact that, at age 30, they’re still acting like they’re in their early twenties. It’s a mark of arrested development in these ‘starter lives’ of theirs: they’re still missing out on those traditional badges of maturity people their age are meant to have earned, namely stable salaries and relationships.

Really, what Gould does best, and what I wanted more of, was simply what the title suggests. The friendship between Bev and Amy is the bedrock, but can sometimes get lost in the workings of the plot. Here are two people who can be completely honest with each other; “they were allies in a world full of idiots and enemies.” When Bev learns she is pregnant from a one-night stand, Amy starts to withdraw from her, and other friendships spring up to threaten the primacy of their own. There’s Bev’s odd relationship with Sally, plus Amy’s ex-colleague Jackie (“it was refreshing to be around someone who, for whatever misguided reason, admired her and wanted her approval”) and Allie, Bev’s college acquaintance.

So what constitutes a friendship? In one of my favorite passages, Bev says to Amy,

“I don’t want money. Well, not from you. I want you to think about me. Call me, text me. Be curious about what’s going on with me, not just use me to unload all your bad feelings, like I’m your therapist. I need you to care about me, not resent me.”

(Take that as a cue to rethink what you’ve been using some of your own friendships for!)

Especially in the post-college years, when we aren’t often thrown into situations in which relationships naturally develop, it can be easy to think of friendship as a bonus, a luxury, rather than a necessity. “I already have loads of ‘friends’ on Facebook,” you might think. “Why would I need any more?” But this novel reminded me of a few things: life is hard, or at least pointless-seeming at times, and we all need a little support. Real, intimate friendships are so rare that they must be nurtured and prized.

Gould is known as a tell-all blogger; she was a former co-editor of Gawker.com gossip website and published an autobiographical essay collection, And the Heart Says Whatever, in 2010. Co-owner of independent e-bookstore Emily Books, Gould is from suburban Maryland (she and I have remarkably similar hometowns and birthdays) and now lives in Brooklyn. Friendship is her first work of fiction, and in some ways it shows. But I suspect that if you can tolerate a bit of froth both on your cappuccino and in your summer reading, you’ll ♥ this book.


Read-alike: It was first published 23 years before, but Ann Hood’s Something Blue has a remarkably similar storyline and friendship theme.

[Jen Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a stinker. My main issue was the two main characters were absolutely interchangeable; the only times I could remember which one I was reading about was when their jobs were mentioned. Or their hair color. They act the same, react the same, and have the same type of internal dialogue. What's more, when attempts are made to flesh them out, I think even the author gets confused. One character who seems to have an amazing knack for turning on her charm and asking for what she wants/always getting it later in the book is in awe of a man who has similar qualities and wonders how he does it like it's something she's never experienced. Just weird. There's a tangential 3rd woman who gets a few random chunks of text but is otherwise just an older version of the two main characters, orbiting their world in a truly unrealistic and preposterous conceit that I won't give away. The plot just gets more and more ridiculous as it progresses, and had I anything else to read that afternoon I'd have put this one down without finishing.

[Nikunj · Rating 1 out of 5]

Emily Gould's book is possibly the worst i have read this year, or even over a couple of years. The book is titled friendship but steers clear of the concept. The main characters are self obsessed, annoying and shallow. The lack of depth in the main characters leads to the story being two dimensional. Reading through it seemed that for Gould the definition of being close friends is that you can urinate in front of each other, but there is no emotional equivalence of this physical action between the two friends. Half of the book one is jealous of the other and in the second half, the tables turn and now the first one is jealous of the other! in between there is a random third woman. There is no logical explanation or even a plausible one of how one goes from house sitting in someone's house to offering them to help you raise your baby, or why one wants to have a baby in the first place- the facile reason is that if you want to grow up, have a baby- possible the stupidest reason to bring a new person in the world. There is no exploration of internal dilemmas when faced with difficult life choices, no debate between supposedly best friends, no resolutions or standing for each other when time comes. There is petulance, selfishness and pettiness.

I read this book as i was on holiday and this was the only reading material at hand. I still regret wasting time on it. Bad book, bad writing

[Edan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in a day and a half while at my in-laws' for Christmas. After feeling so disconnected from reading I was able to fall into three absorbing novels while on this trip--hallelujah! Emily Gould's Friendship was one of these novels.

Gould's novel is a fun, funny, engaging and surprising read. I felt invested in the lives of Bev and Amy, even when I didn't like them. I really liked the novel's attention to money, or the lack of money, in the lives of these middle class (or affluent) white women. I came into this book knowing nothing, and I found the detours in the plot wonderfully unexpected. It was interesting to me how this book adhered to a normative plot about young women, and how it didn't. There was some darkness here, a little weirdness, just at the edge, that I liked a lot. Occasionally the prose felt a touch generic, and I wished the writing and the scenes felt more particular and specific. But, again, it was the perfect holiday read. Ah, to be holed up with a book!

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the past few years I've noticed a bit of a trend with authors who set their novels in a time period where cell phones, computers, the internet, and most especially social media does not exist. I understand that perhaps it's difficult to write in a certain serious way when these technologies may seem shallow - or, maybe, difficult to be dramatic (miscommunication, a missed message, etc.). But there's still drama in this technology-laden world we live in, and I'm glad Emily Gould wrote a novel that reads like today. Like it happened to three women I could know and live in the same world that I do in 2014. And for how well I know this world and with the feel I have for these characters, I still didn't know what would happen next and what decisions they would make. The book really is about characters making decisions, and as an incredibly indecisive person who freaks out about money, I turned each page with a little bit of anxiety on what Bev, Amy, and Sally would do next. This was a good thing, and I liked the book a great deal.

I'm not sure why I got all misty-eyed at the end, but maybe it's because I remember intense fights with friends. There are those ones that can be overcome, and it's one of the best feelings to feel reunited. And it's the worst when you can't. I've cried far more tears for a break of friendship than a romantic relationship; I think Bev and Amy are similar.

[Marcy Dermansky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey Emily Gould, you stole my entire Sunday. I was having one of those unambitious days, not knowing what should I do. I went for a run. I ran too far. It made me tired. So, I thought I would read for a little while, and I started Friendship. Which is what I did that, with breaks for meals, bathroom. I ate my cookies and drank my afternoon coffee while reading.

Gould gets it so right: what it feels like to be a certain age, living in New York. How, it is, in fact, possible to fall further than you think. And how friends sometimes fight. Make up. Or don't make up. Gould also wrote the moving text message exchange in the history of literary text messages. I say this in all seriousness -- it is how we live now, after all.

The book is a pleasure.

[Lorri Steinbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was prepared to dislike this book. Expected the characters to be the usual brand of self-involved, whiny character that these types of "privileged twentyish-somethings with too much choice navigating friendship and the world" novels tend to be filled with. Not so. Not to say that Bev and Amy aren't self-absorbed, and in many ways lousy with choice. They are, it's just that somehow, Gould manages to make Bev and Amy real, not just vehicles to deliver chick-lit tropes. I can't say I liked Bev and Amy, but I wanted them to succeed. When Amy sleeps with Sally's husband I found myself wanting to shout No! at her and talk her out of it, even though it was inevitable that she would be unable to stop any act of self-sabotage. As for Bev, while I didn't buy into the whole Sally as fairy godmother storyline, I did buy Bev's realization that even work that you once saw as beneath you can bring with it satisfactions, if you end up being good at it.

Sometimes letting go of your twenties is hard, particularly if the dreams you had for your life haven't exactly come true. Sometimes it can take you well into your thirties to make other plans. As you leave Bev and Amy at the end of Firendship, you suspect that they are at least making a start of it.

(Proud of myself for not once referencing the TV show Girls n my review!)

[christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the safety of seven years, a decade away, I can now say that we all went a little capital I-for-internet, insane in the mid-2000s. Here we were with this way of connecting with practically everyone with with access to home row and we used it. Hell yes, we used it. We adopted a sort of drunk-n-devil-may-care personae and wrote minute replays of everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to one-night makeouts. We gave enemies nicknames and embellished fan fiction about their yolk-stained cordaroys. We were so, so … loud.

At the same time, shit was exploding everywhere. Our Readers bulged. It wasn’t uncommon to be a die-hard fan of 200 different blogs. And when those ran out, there was Gawker or HuffPo or Slate or McSweeneys or The Onion. We were boldly, triumphantly megaphoning our existence at whoever would listen. We were gobbling up instances of other people existing, too, and commenting whether on the site or snickering while hidden behind Cheeto dust.

In the mid-2000s you could still get famous for your blog. You could also get fired.

Blah Blah Facebook, RIP blogs.

This post-frenzy age of the internet gets its due in Emily Gould’s novel “Friendship,” a novel of besties negotiating their changing relationship when Bev, a Midwestern refugee, gets preggers after a one-nighter with the ho-hum Vice Prez of a place where she temped once. The other character, the one who thinks it’s disgusting to let a stranger put one of his body parts into one of your body parts, is a once-famous online personality -- from the aforementioned heyday -- who became a sort of poison-penned internet villain before she was fired from a Gawker-esque place.

These days Amy (who looks a lot like Emily Gould and has a boyfriend who sounds a little bit like Emily Gould’s fiance) is working for another online community, but a little-known site owned by rich people who don’t really understand the internet and toss around Buzz Concepts like sitemeters and viral vids. This leaves Amy plenty of time to G-Chat with Bev and consider her relationship with a non-committal artist boyfriend.

Bev is a recent MFA drop out who is working at temp jobs and is a bit shell-shocked about how long it is going to take to pay off her lone year of grad school (this, too, has shades of Gould). Her life derailed a bit a few years earlier when she followed A Todd to Wisconsin. She went quietly insane enough in Milwaukee to pick up a running habit that proved detrimental to her hip joints. She returned to Brooklyn after the breakup and back to her friend-style life partner Amy, whom she met while working in publishing.

Mostly these girls are burdened by the reality that they do not make enough money to live the way they want. This becomes even more obvious when they housesit for a friend of a friend in Upstate New York. The multiple room house and all its accoutrements make enough of an impression that when Bev gets pregnant, the friends think it is reasonable to consider giving the baby to the couple who owns the house. As luck would have it, Sally was seen in an earlier episode at a fertility clinic where she has decided she’s done trying to get pregnant -- so this just might work.

So, “Friendship.” At one level, it’s a throwaway story about two girls, one who is aggressively immature and unwilling to change that and one who is considering keeping her baby as a means of no longer being aggressive immature. On another level, the one I prefer, it is a glimpse into the psyche of Emily Gould, who has enough in common with Amy to make certain parts of the story actually edible. It’s on this level where I have to kind of say, “Hm, your psyche is young, Emily.” The third level is the most universally interesting: That is: Life After the Mid-2000s Internet Scramble. Amy is very much a person who benefitted from this new medium before being very much bitten by this new medium. Insert Cylon reference here.

[Jade Lopert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blurb (from Amazon): Friendship, Emily Gould’s debut novel, traces the evolution of a friendship with humor and wry sympathy. Gould examines the relationship between two women who want to help each other but sometimes can’t help themselves; who want to make good decisions but sometimes fall prey to their own worst impulses; whose generous intentions are sometimes overwhelmed by petty concerns.

This is a novel about the way we speak and live today; about the ways we disappoint and betray one another. At once a meditation on the modern meaning of maturity and a timeless portrait of the underexamined bond that exists between friends, this exacting and truthful novel is a revelation.

The Good(ish):
Female friendships are a topic that isn't often addressed as more than a subplot in fiction very often. So, concept wise I had incredibly high hopes for this novel.

The Bad (and by bad, I mean awful):
Bev and Amy are terrible. I do mean absolutely terrible. I spent 98% of the book wanting to punch both of them in the face, I disliked them so completely. They are shallow, selfish and live in some place that is nothing like the real world. Nothing. Not even a little bit. People who come along and hand you everything you happen to need to grow up at exactly the right time do not exist. If they do exist, they are so rare as to be like unicorns so they may as well not exist. Seriously, when pregnant a magical rich godmother who has met you once does not swoop in and offer to give you money and time share your baby. I'm pretty sure this has not happened once in the history of the world.

Final Thoughts:
I HATED THIS BOOK. Reading this put me in a bad mood in the way that I can only imagine having a conversation with these characters in real life would put you in a bad mood. I just can't. Cannot. I think I skew a little old for the intended audience and maybe that's why I don't get the appeal. This is the entitlement of the Millennial Generation in it's finest print form. I refuse to accept that the majority of girls in this generation have so little a grasp on reality that they don't understand any finances at all. "I can't take a job like this, because it's embarrassing" while unable to buy food. It just can't be that bad, can it? I refuse to think that girls like Amy are all that commonplace. The point is supposed to be growing up, but Amy is just as much a selfish asshole at the end of the book as she is at the beginning.
Just ugh. Seriously, don't read this. Just don't.

Edit: After reading through some other reviews, if you loved this book because you identified with their friendship, find better friends and get away from the toxicity.

[zan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an engaging and zeitgeist-y story of female friendship, an honest reflection of how we communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other in the modern world. The dialogue is incredibly realistic, and the portrayal of the challenges of being youngish and broke in NYC (but not young enough for it to feel hip or bohemian anymore), of how it affects your perception of self, is spot on.

It's hard to really get into what I so enjoyed about this book without revealing major plot points or spoilers, so instead I'll just say that once this book got into the meat of the matter (perhaps a bit unfortunately coming almost at the halfway point, which was my only real problem with the book, and even then it didn't keep me from wanting to keep reading), I really connected, and couldn't put it down until I reached the end. Amy, Bev, and Sally are lodged in my mind somewhere in the realm of personal favorite characters dreamed up by Mary McCarthy or Rona Jaffe, characters who in so many ways are still girlish in outlook, and yet forced into situations where they must redefine themselves as grown women. This book cleverly reminds us that this redefinition often comes outside relationships with men, and often, sadly, in comparison to other women. (Some might reference another well-known female-driven HBO series in their reviews of this book, but Amy's arc is far more closely tied in my mind to another Amy: the protagonist in the more grown-up Enlightened.)

I like to imagine when I read a modern book how it will read in twenty or thirty years, and I think this one is such a great time capsule of how we are now that I can't wait to get to 2044 to read it again and be like YES that's what it was like.

A great summer read.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recognized interesting dynamics and situations in Emily Gould's "Friendship," and I found those moments - making a new friend in adulthood, admitting awful personal behavior, accidentally having a more meaningful conversation than you intended, asking for help when you are slightly beyond needing it - believable and relatable.

However, I was disappointed to discover at the end how fully we were following Amy, entirely sidelining Bev while her defining decision came to fruition, and never really getting to know enigmatic, relentlessly wealthy, poorly-drawn Sally. I had bought in to the idea that I was following a fully-realized examination of three women all at different stages of life/opportunity/ambition, but instead just discovered the author's obvious bias for the importance of Amy's career change/personal revelation at the expense of all the other characters she introduced.

Kirkus-style summary: Good, not great. HBO's Girls has more realistically-drawn characters and novels like "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" or "The Family Fang" portray more comprehensive sketches of modern women coming back from the brink.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had never heard of this book or of Emily Gould before, but I saw her read at an event and I was interested to check this out. I read the book in a day, but halfway through it I kind of wanted to stop; I kept going because I knew it wouldn't take me much longer to finish. I was disappointed by the lack of real closeness between 2 main friend characters; I felt like we come into the narrative too late in their friendship to really get a sense for what makes them BEST FRIENDS, instead the situations that became bonds between them felt weak because they were mostly discussed in hindsight. But, after reading this book I started thinking about how I would describe my closest female friendships, and it would be really hard to express why the things that were bonds between us were really important, because so much of what is great about close friends are those little, insignificant-seeming-but-actually-really-important moments. Anyway, I wished it was deeper: big things happen to the characters, but they feel trite. As 2 stars indicate: It was OK.

[Danielle McClellan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel would have probably been more fun for me to read when I was a twenty-something girl about town. Although, at that age, I was deeply into tragic European authors so I would probably have dismissed this book as lightweight. These days, I am less snobbish about genres, but am sadly no longer even marginally part of the book's demographic, so my comments should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.

Reading this novel about young women on the cusp of no longer being young (maybe they are thirty?) trying to find a place for themselves, I could only think to myself, thank god those days are over. After forty-five, one grows weary of reading about smart, funny girls that spend their valuable time navel gazing, focusing on lousy relationships, and refusing to grow up (like mini, tattooed Peter Pan's). I keep wanting to shout at those girls in literature and in the real world: "Life is to short for this lightweight misery. Get a life." Or rather, "Claim your own life."

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I thought this book was a bit lazy. Gould would have been better off just writing a memoir since the book is so obviously auto-biographical. I feel like there wasn't a lot of thought put into the story or the details. The book was so much like my and my friends' lives (young Millennial women working in NYC, living in Brooklyn, nearing 30)yet somehow managed to be completely unrelatable. Not much depth to any of the characters. Predictable and yet unbelievable plot lines. I was looking forward to this book but was sadly underwhelmed.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mmmm. I probably shouldn't have chosen this to read but it had a nice shiny cover and a recommendation by Curtis Sittenfeld a writer I really like.

Friendship has its moments and is not terrible but to me it needed a darned good edit as if this manuscript should have been rejected and then polished up.

My other major issue is that neither of the main characters are very nice. Both are egotistical and use others without seeming to care.

It is an easy read and Emily Gould can write.

[Maria Strale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tänkte nästan lägga bort boken. Början är rätt tjatig och trots att den handlar om trettioåriga kvinnor kändes de som tonåringar. Fast det är kanske en poäng...
Nåväl, det intressanta börjar när de pga av de väldigt olika situationer de hamnar i glider ifrån varandra. Förvisso känns det lite happy-go-lucky men problematiken är klar och intressant.

[Belinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emily Gould is Internet famous and she had a famous Internet meltdown. The thing about being Internet famous, though, is that while one may be ridiculously well known in one's own corner of the world wide web, the Internet is so niche that only the others who hang out where you do will know who you are (a case in point is the Yarn Harlot, a woman so Internet famous that her simply knitting a pattern can cause its popularity to sky rocket and whole colourways of yarn to sell out but who is virtually unknown outside the knitting blogosphere). Obviously Emily Gould and I reside in different parts of the Internet because it is only recently that I discovered who she is - a blogger who wrote for Gawker who got given a lot of money to write a book which then bombed and the stories within it caused rifts with her friends and family.

This knowledge about Emily Gould is fundamental to an understanding of her first adult novel, Friendship. In this book, Amy is an Internet famous person who had a famous Internet meltdown. She is now the editor of Yidster, a blog with "a modern Jewish focus" and a small but loyal readership, which is slowly and steadily losing money. Amy hates her job but it only involves about 15 minutes of actual work per day and she is too lethargic to do anything about finding a better job. Beth is a midwestern transplant who is back in New York after disastrously moving to Wisconsin for love. She is paying back an immense student loan debt from the one year she completed of a two-year MFA program. She is temping and struggling to make ends meet. This book chronicles the ups and downs of their friendship after Beth becomes pregnant after one night stand and Amy is forced to address the realities of her life.

Emily Gould is a very good writer. I read this book in one sitting, while my cat basked in the sun next to me. This is super rare for me to do and an indication of how easy the book is to read. I think the book also really captures well the dynamics of intense female friendship. However, these characters are incredibly and profoundly irritating. They make really stupid decisions really often, they seem completely unable to inhabit a financial and practical reality and they act with a truly breathtaking talent for self-destruction. The plot is frankly a bit stupid, particularly Beth's decision to scrimp on the $40 the morning-after pill would cost and the entire Sally plotline.


My cat, keeping me company and lying in the sun

For me, this book feels a lot like the TV show Girls (a comparison that I am sure Emily Gould quite consciously cultivated). It focuses on a bunch of women who feel entitled to a life they can't afford and bewildered that life isn't turning out like they thought it would. These women are obnoxious, bratty and, for anyone with actual real problems, incredibly frustrating. But they are also entertaining and funny and very watchable. Emily Gould's online person is ridiculously self-involved and self-centred and the characters she created are also but she is a good writer. Your ability to enjoy this book will completely depend on your tolerance of Gould and her characters unrelenting self-absorption. Three stars.

One more thing: paying $60,000 for an MFA will not make you a writer. It is only through the act of writing that one becomes a writer. Invest that $60,000 in making sure you have the time and space to write rather than supporting the exploitative idea that an MFA is a thing of actual value.

[Trina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know this is a debut novel, so I feel a bit badly rating this so low. It's not badly written, not at all. It did keep me reading and I sped through it rather quickly, although that was mostly because I recognized right away that this wouldn't be what I was expecting so I wanted to finish it quickly in order to move on the my large TBR pile. My rating is based solely on how much I enjoyed this book compared to other books I've been reading lately. I picked this up wanting a highly relateable story about friendship as you get older. See, I am almost 30, not in the career field that I got a degree in, and my best friend is having a baby, which I have a lot of anxiety about how this will change our 10 year long friendship. Yep, I seem like the perfect target audience for this book, right?

The characters were very relatable at first, and that is why I didn't put the book down. However, I was expecting more of a powerful insight about adult friendship. That was lacking for me. These two friends just faced problem after problem, and in the end I didn't see a whole lot of growth from them individually or together. This book just didn't give me what I needed from it. I guess being that I was the perfect audience, I needed more of a resolution between the friends, more insight about this "growing up" thing. Instead, I was pretty abysmally put off by statements like:

"She was travelling to a different world now: a Lycra-clad, jargon-filled, slightly ridiculous but decidedly adult world, and it was not a world where Amy belonged." (about being pregnant)

OR
"Do any of your close friends have kids?"
"My closest friends? No. They're still more in the... behaving like infants themselves stage."

These statements were out of no where. The two friends had been acting on the same level of maturity up to now, but then as soon as Bev realized she might be able to actually raise a child, it was like this switch flipped and suddenly she's so much better than her non-mom friend.

Listen. Women, we need to stop perpetuating this idea that moms and non-moms can't be friends. That non-mothers are somehow stupid, immature, or "infant-like." You don't have to have children to have meaning and purpose in life, or to be a mature, successful adult. And you can certainly be friends whether or not you have kids, are married, have a successful job, etc. We need to quit creating these invisible divides. It only serves to harm us.

The book never contradicted those statements by having the women challenge the idea that they couldn't remain just as close as ever, but instead continued to treat a baby as a status symbol. So, for me, this book just wasn't what I wanted, and didn't have a powerful message about adult friendship in the end. On top of that, it felt plucked right from several episodes of Sex and the City, which as wonderful as it was, I've already seen.

That's not to say that other readers wouldn't enjoy it more. It just wasn't for me.

[Misty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was kind of like a few episodes of Gossip Girl...



you might be able to believe that friends relate and react to one another this way, but in the end you are kinda in a friendship-romcom.

I was into it for the most part of the book... I enjoyed the friendship between two young women trying to figure out their lives and acting as one another's "life partner". Bev gets pregnant, then it just gets weird... they decide it is a good idea to try and "sell" Bev's baby to a total stranger (okay, they did house sit for them one time) and they think bc she is married and with no child she would "want to be a mother". WTF?! There was a discussion of abortion and an attempt, which could have been a good opportunity for the development of friends to go through a very real experience together and grow from it. But instead... [SERIOUS SPOLER] Bev OUT OF NOWHERE decides that she is going to KEEP THE BABY! So the big revelation she has in keeping the baby is bc Bev runs into her ex-writing professor who has the best solution to ALL her problems - She has a friend who can get Bev a store manager job at a maternity/baby store... and guess what?! Bev is perfect bc she is PREGNANT!!! OHMYGAWD, BEST REASON TO KEEP A BABY! Bc being pregnant will make you the best candidate for this job! At this point I would have thrown my book, but I was on public transportation and it would have been very rude.

Oh, not to mention, that lady who she wanted to sell her baby to offers to help take care of the baby and help pay for some things. WHAT?! The two women hardly know each other, aren't friends, but you can care for my baby and financially support us. HUH?! I mean, I guess you take what you can get when you have limited options for co-parenting.

I could have agreed with the book and Bev's decision to keep the baby if there was some real thought into her wanting to be a mother, not the convenience of a job that is perfect for a pregnant woman.

Then of course the baby drives the two friends apart... life happens yadda yadda yadda... they end up friends again at the end. I did however, really enjoy the last chapter of the reuniting over email/text. That felt very real.

XO XO Gossip Girl



Overall ... more like at 2.75 rating... rounding up.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel that I have been waiting for someone to write a book exactly like this, a book which reflects the realities of living as a late twenty-something/early thirties woman in a big city where job opportunities are scarce (and severely oversubscribed!) where money (or lack of it) is a daily concern and where people are transient and always on the move. I adored the characters of Bev and Amy, I warmed to them instantly and loved their brutally honest and quirky friendship. The dialogue is spot-on, very sincere and believable. It's attention to detail was impeccable - there's a moment where Bev realises that she may not be able to pay the rent at the end of the week but chooses to treat herself to a $15 salad. There's another where Amy tots up exactly how much debt she is in (maxed out credit cards, overdrafts etc) but realises she owns a whole cupboard of designer clothes (to which her boyfriend says 'you never even look that good! - or something along those lines. These are the (often grim) realities of being a young woman starting out in a big city. It's so refreshing to read something which actually reflects life as it is being lived right now. I've no doubt that this will attract comparisons to the hit TV show GIRLS (as have several 'similar' novels recently - Zoe Pilger's EAT MY HEART OUT and Emma J Unsworth's ANIMALS) but I feel that this novel goes much deeper than that - the characters have so much going on under the surface, they have flesh and bone and I will miss them dearly

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have an opinion of Emily Gould, just ignore that opinion. Or imagine Anonymous wrote the book. Then proceed.
I did have some peer pressure to read this book, but once I started, I read it within a 24 hour period. The story is kind of ridiculous, but 75% rings true - for a lot of the younger population, they were in the middle of trying to find a career when 9/11 happened, but publishing started to really change around 1998 (as I'm led to believe). So these two characters were left without a job, only to start again, getting paid to blog, which maybe weren't the best jobs. We follow a friendship thru these transitions - things go from bad to worse.
I found myself wondering, didn't they know about applying for welfare or social services? I guess not. It's sometimes easier to let it all slide until you are about out on the street. This is all about NYC - which can be especially brutal. Who had money to even rent in Williamsburg in 2002?
It's not an unusual story, but much of it rang true for me, as a college educated white female, boring as that may be.

[Peter Knox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friendship is an exemplary modern contemporary novel that feels more 'Frances Ha' than 'GIRLS' in it's intimate dealings with a NYC based female friendship.

The characters deal head on with trouble: career, money, rent, real estate, relationships, sex, and ultimately pregnancy. The way the conversations felt organic and natural carries through in how they handle modern communication and expectation of themselves and each other.

It's funny, awkward, real feeling, and had me guessing in which way the plot would lead (unrelated: I read this in 3 days). It was shocking and satisfying. I approve and recommend this read, just because it felt worth it and think of it as a strong, if at times a long shot, reflection of today.

[Raven Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable read. Emily Gould has a fabulous authorial voice - Amy and Bev were written so well that I felt they were friends I'd known for years. I could relate so much to this book and the characters; there were so many passages when I thought OMG THIS IS MY LIFE, or times the characters' desires and fears matched my own. I also loved the urban hipster NYC setting - God I wish I lived in New York! Gould perfectly captures the fears, desires and problems many women on the cusp of 30 experience. If you're a woman in your late 20s you definitely should read this book!