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Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict
As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren't they just as – if not more – important? So why is it hard to find the right words to express what these uniquely complex bonds mean to us?
In this fascinating, insightful and uniquely moving book, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to find out. Friendaholic unpacks the significance and evolution of friendship from the ancient wisdom of Cicero to the modern curse of ghosting. How and why do we make friends? Is friendship an antidote to loneliness? How should we deal with a frenemy? And is it ok to end a friendship that has gone awry?
Friendaholic examines what makes a ‘good’ friend and asks us what kind of friend we want to be – to each other but also to ourselves
In this fascinating, insightful and uniquely moving book, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to find out. Friendaholic unpacks the significance and evolution of friendship from the ancient wisdom of Cicero to the modern curse of ghosting. How and why do we make friends? Is friendship an antidote to loneliness? How should we deal with a frenemy? And is it ok to end a friendship that has gone awry?
Friendaholic examines what makes a ‘good’ friend and asks us what kind of friend we want to be – to each other but also to ourselves
448 pages, Paperback
Published March 14, 2024
1060 people are currently reading
15879 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Day
22 books1,815 followersElizabeth Day is an English journalist, broadcaster and novelist. She was a feature writer for The Observer from 2007 to 2016 and has written four novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 969 reviews
March 29, 2023
29.03.2023
This book definitely made me think a lot about the people in my life - the past and current friends that I’ve had and the roles they’ve played. It’s helped me to rationalise and reflect on my own experiences while reading about the authors. I feel a little less alone and a lot more equipped to handle certain situations with friends.
My only real problem with this book (other than the fact that I didn’t think it was possible for a person to have THIS many friends), is the amount of tangents and metaphors packed into each chapter. I really enjoyed reading this, but I found the point or anecdote was often lost in a seemingly pointless side story or fact or lengthy metaphor.
This book definitely made me think a lot about the people in my life - the past and current friends that I’ve had and the roles they’ve played. It’s helped me to rationalise and reflect on my own experiences while reading about the authors. I feel a little less alone and a lot more equipped to handle certain situations with friends.
My only real problem with this book (other than the fact that I didn’t think it was possible for a person to have THIS many friends), is the amount of tangents and metaphors packed into each chapter. I really enjoyed reading this, but I found the point or anecdote was often lost in a seemingly pointless side story or fact or lengthy metaphor.
September 24, 2025
I'm careful not to criticise books for not being what I wanted them to be. It states very clearly on the cover that it is the Confessions Of A Friendship Addict and this is very much a confessional. As such, everything is couched in the author's own experience and most topics are presented as the author trying to sort out a problem in her life.
Unfortunately, for me, the book is most interesting where it is least like a confessional and most like a scientific exploration of friendship. For example the discussion of Cicero's De Amicitia or Dunbar's friendship circles are fascinating. What's less fascinating to me is Day's hand wringing about what text message she should send a shitty friend who she doesn't really like.
That is not to say an exploration of friendship should only be done from the scientific perspective, there's no doubt that we experience friendship as a feeling and thus it's both subjective and completely personal. I'm just not sure Day's experiences of friendship are representative of the core experience for most people. I can sense that she will be routinely criticised for being a wealthy white women trying to explore her friendships in a first world country where she wants for very little. Even the section with her black friend Sharmaine undermines itself. The discussions talk about the complications involved in being the only black friend to a white person etc and sadly its place in the book feels very much like the tokenism that Day and Sharmaine are trying to fight. What's more, friendship is a universal experience that unites people and while it may be experienced differently by various cultures a fixation on division rather than connectivity seems counter-productive.
Academic and scientific lines of reasoning are used in this book to provide a bit of starch to an otherwise completely subjective book. Given that science is used as seasoning it shouldn't be surprising that there is little rigor cast over the facts chosen to support or prompt Day's positions. Of particular note was the use of the 2019 Snapchat Friendship report. I'm all for corporate entities creating qualitative studies with their platforms, we can always do with more research, but I'm also incredibly sceptical of the results. Day unfortunately applies no critical analysis whatsoever. Here's the extract about the Snapchat Friendship Report.
"It surveyed over 10,000 people across the world and found that the average age for meeting a best friend was twenty-one. The cultural perception of what a best friend was, and how many one should have, varied across countries. In India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, people reported having three times the number of best friends as those in Australia, Europe and the US. Saudi Arabians had the highest average number of best friends at 6.6, while Britons had the lowest at 2.6. Americans are most likely to report having only one best friend. Fourteen percent had no best friend at all."
Let's unpack this. Firstly, a Snapchat study. Ok, so only people who have Snapchat. I wonder what the average age of people who have Snapchat is? Well what do you know, it's 21. I wonder if there's a gender bias in Snapchat users as well. Yes there is. Ok. People in Saudi Arabia report 6.6 best friends on average and Britons are the lowest at 2.6 but also Americans are most likely to report having only one. So wait is Britain still the lowest? Or is America? What about the word best? What does that mean? Isn't it a superlative?
Best: Superlative of good. Better than all others. my best friend. : good or useful in the highest degree : most excellent.
It is indeed a superlative. So that means realistically you can only have one. This is something I really wanted Day to address more broadly because she has a whole chapter for her "Best" friend and in that very chapter reveals this study where people can have 6.6 best friends. That's not how superlatives work. Do Americans only have one best friend because they understand superlatives? In general I'm ok with saying you have more than one best friend but Day has made it quite clear she only has one and that she's super special.
Rant over.
But the above is completely symptomatic of this book. The data is interesting if interpreted the right way but it's not useful if you just throw it out there without examining it properly. Why not explore why people from other cultures report having more best friends? That is the weakness of the confessional; everything is limited to the experience of the author.
Which gets at the other big limitation of the book for me, the outright dismissal of male-to-male friendships. She briefly pokes fun at the bromance, and goes on to say that the decrease in military participation has robbed men of the ability to have close physical relationships with other men. Despite the fact that's just wrong, if it was right why could that be? Has Day never seen a sports practice? There's no recognition that many male friendships are built differently but are no less deep. Men can have a deep bond that requires little to no talking to maintain. Any man who has played a game like rugby will attest to that. I've got friends who would run through a brick wall, both literally and metaphorically, for me based on our friendship developed through sport. We don't have to have "White Wine Wednesdays" to discuss how we feel about each other because playing and training alongside each other and pushing ourselves beyond physical barriers to grow as teammates and not let each other down says more than any fireside discussion possibly could.
Her only other source on male-to-male friendships is her male friend who doesn't have any. Seen as he doesn't have any or think they're any good they must therefore not exist right? That's just stupid. This male friend of hers who is the chosen expert on male friendship despite not having any says he's the type of guy who hates a stag do. Hmmmmm. I wonder if we should maybe look around for someone who likes the quintessential western male-to-male bonding experience before we just openly dismiss male friendship as a fiction. I turn to psychologist and professor Paul Wright to sum up the main difference between male and female friendships.
The essential difference between male and female same-sex friendships, is that female friendships are "face to face" whereas male friendships are "side by side". These phrases capture the frequently replicated finding that female friends like to "just talk" and view this activity as central to their friendship. Females compared to males also describe their talk as more intimate and more self-disclosing. Male friends, on the other hand, prefer to do things together other than "just talking." They share activities, such as sports, where their attention is focused on the same goals but not on one another.
This position may be horribly wrong for some people. It was noted down in the 80's so I'm sure its simple summary has since been superseded but it highlights the fact that if Day had just done a little bit more research she may have been able to really shed some light on male-to-male friendships and by way of contrast female-to-female friendships, and then friendship in general.
I also found the structure of the book slightly frustrating. I thought it was clever to have a different friend for each chapter and the inserted friend diaries from other people she'd interviewed were good too (though they should only have been inserted at the end of chapters not in the middle of one). Unfortunately, the friends don't stay to their chapters and some are far more interesting and more important for Day and hence pop up more regularly and say things of more interest. Because friends from later in the book pop up before their chapter I found the need for a cast list at the start of the book, like a Shakespearean play. I needed a reference to turn to every time Ellen but not Ellie or Lizzie, or Lisa, or Lou popped into the narrative. Was there a Becca and a Becs?
So I said I wouldn't criticise the book for not being what I wanted it to be but then I went and did that anyway. The book is an easy read about friendship and I think it's very much a book that will be appreciated more by women, I'm excited for some female friends to read it so I can hear their opinions about it.
Unfortunately, for me, the book is most interesting where it is least like a confessional and most like a scientific exploration of friendship. For example the discussion of Cicero's De Amicitia or Dunbar's friendship circles are fascinating. What's less fascinating to me is Day's hand wringing about what text message she should send a shitty friend who she doesn't really like.
That is not to say an exploration of friendship should only be done from the scientific perspective, there's no doubt that we experience friendship as a feeling and thus it's both subjective and completely personal. I'm just not sure Day's experiences of friendship are representative of the core experience for most people. I can sense that she will be routinely criticised for being a wealthy white women trying to explore her friendships in a first world country where she wants for very little. Even the section with her black friend Sharmaine undermines itself. The discussions talk about the complications involved in being the only black friend to a white person etc and sadly its place in the book feels very much like the tokenism that Day and Sharmaine are trying to fight. What's more, friendship is a universal experience that unites people and while it may be experienced differently by various cultures a fixation on division rather than connectivity seems counter-productive.
Academic and scientific lines of reasoning are used in this book to provide a bit of starch to an otherwise completely subjective book. Given that science is used as seasoning it shouldn't be surprising that there is little rigor cast over the facts chosen to support or prompt Day's positions. Of particular note was the use of the 2019 Snapchat Friendship report. I'm all for corporate entities creating qualitative studies with their platforms, we can always do with more research, but I'm also incredibly sceptical of the results. Day unfortunately applies no critical analysis whatsoever. Here's the extract about the Snapchat Friendship Report.
"It surveyed over 10,000 people across the world and found that the average age for meeting a best friend was twenty-one. The cultural perception of what a best friend was, and how many one should have, varied across countries. In India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, people reported having three times the number of best friends as those in Australia, Europe and the US. Saudi Arabians had the highest average number of best friends at 6.6, while Britons had the lowest at 2.6. Americans are most likely to report having only one best friend. Fourteen percent had no best friend at all."
Let's unpack this. Firstly, a Snapchat study. Ok, so only people who have Snapchat. I wonder what the average age of people who have Snapchat is? Well what do you know, it's 21. I wonder if there's a gender bias in Snapchat users as well. Yes there is. Ok. People in Saudi Arabia report 6.6 best friends on average and Britons are the lowest at 2.6 but also Americans are most likely to report having only one. So wait is Britain still the lowest? Or is America? What about the word best? What does that mean? Isn't it a superlative?
Best: Superlative of good. Better than all others. my best friend. : good or useful in the highest degree : most excellent.
It is indeed a superlative. So that means realistically you can only have one. This is something I really wanted Day to address more broadly because she has a whole chapter for her "Best" friend and in that very chapter reveals this study where people can have 6.6 best friends. That's not how superlatives work. Do Americans only have one best friend because they understand superlatives? In general I'm ok with saying you have more than one best friend but Day has made it quite clear she only has one and that she's super special.
Rant over.
But the above is completely symptomatic of this book. The data is interesting if interpreted the right way but it's not useful if you just throw it out there without examining it properly. Why not explore why people from other cultures report having more best friends? That is the weakness of the confessional; everything is limited to the experience of the author.
Which gets at the other big limitation of the book for me, the outright dismissal of male-to-male friendships. She briefly pokes fun at the bromance, and goes on to say that the decrease in military participation has robbed men of the ability to have close physical relationships with other men. Despite the fact that's just wrong, if it was right why could that be? Has Day never seen a sports practice? There's no recognition that many male friendships are built differently but are no less deep. Men can have a deep bond that requires little to no talking to maintain. Any man who has played a game like rugby will attest to that. I've got friends who would run through a brick wall, both literally and metaphorically, for me based on our friendship developed through sport. We don't have to have "White Wine Wednesdays" to discuss how we feel about each other because playing and training alongside each other and pushing ourselves beyond physical barriers to grow as teammates and not let each other down says more than any fireside discussion possibly could.
Her only other source on male-to-male friendships is her male friend who doesn't have any. Seen as he doesn't have any or think they're any good they must therefore not exist right? That's just stupid. This male friend of hers who is the chosen expert on male friendship despite not having any says he's the type of guy who hates a stag do. Hmmmmm. I wonder if we should maybe look around for someone who likes the quintessential western male-to-male bonding experience before we just openly dismiss male friendship as a fiction. I turn to psychologist and professor Paul Wright to sum up the main difference between male and female friendships.
The essential difference between male and female same-sex friendships, is that female friendships are "face to face" whereas male friendships are "side by side". These phrases capture the frequently replicated finding that female friends like to "just talk" and view this activity as central to their friendship. Females compared to males also describe their talk as more intimate and more self-disclosing. Male friends, on the other hand, prefer to do things together other than "just talking." They share activities, such as sports, where their attention is focused on the same goals but not on one another.
This position may be horribly wrong for some people. It was noted down in the 80's so I'm sure its simple summary has since been superseded but it highlights the fact that if Day had just done a little bit more research she may have been able to really shed some light on male-to-male friendships and by way of contrast female-to-female friendships, and then friendship in general.
I also found the structure of the book slightly frustrating. I thought it was clever to have a different friend for each chapter and the inserted friend diaries from other people she'd interviewed were good too (though they should only have been inserted at the end of chapters not in the middle of one). Unfortunately, the friends don't stay to their chapters and some are far more interesting and more important for Day and hence pop up more regularly and say things of more interest. Because friends from later in the book pop up before their chapter I found the need for a cast list at the start of the book, like a Shakespearean play. I needed a reference to turn to every time Ellen but not Ellie or Lizzie, or Lisa, or Lou popped into the narrative. Was there a Becca and a Becs?
So I said I wouldn't criticise the book for not being what I wanted it to be but then I went and did that anyway. The book is an easy read about friendship and I think it's very much a book that will be appreciated more by women, I'm excited for some female friends to read it so I can hear their opinions about it.
March 21, 2023
Devoured this within a day. Literally obsessed. I want everyone I know to read this, and also want to write a love letter to all of my friends, past and present. A must read !!!
March 22, 2023
Growing up, Elizabeth wanted to make everyone like her. Lacking friends at school, she grew up to believe that quantity equalled quality. Having lots of friends meant that you were loved, popular and safe. She was determined to become a Good Friend. And, in many ways, she did. But in adulthood she slowly realised that it was often to the detriment of her own boundaries and mental health.
Elizabeth Day tells us stories from her own personal life. This will be a very relatable book for many readers. She explores friendships and relationships. This is a thought provoking read. We don't need a massive circle of friends to support us. You just need the right people in your life.
I would like to thank #NetGalley #4thEstate and the author #ElizabethDay for my ARC of #Friendaholic in exchange for an honest review.
Elizabeth Day tells us stories from her own personal life. This will be a very relatable book for many readers. She explores friendships and relationships. This is a thought provoking read. We don't need a massive circle of friends to support us. You just need the right people in your life.
I would like to thank #NetGalley #4thEstate and the author #ElizabethDay for my ARC of #Friendaholic in exchange for an honest review.
September 9, 2023
400 pages of basic middle class navel gazing. I found this literally pointless.
September 29, 2023
It's a testament to the popularity of Friendaholic that I put it on hold at the library as both a hardback and an audiobook. The hardback took 4 months to arrive; the audiobook would have taken 6 months.
However, I think it's less because this book is stellar (it's #mid), and more because friendship doesn't get talked about enough in our society. For me personally, failed friendships have left lasting scars on my soul; the successful ones mean more to me than I can say. Yet we rarely stop to examine those hurts and joys; family and romance take up all the air in the proverbial room.
Anyway, enough about friendship in general and onto Friendaholic as a book. Its first few chapters are its strongest, as Elizabeth Day recounts various friendships in her life (the childhood friend, the college friend, the frienemy, the date who turned into a friend). These recollections are warm and vivid, but very, very specific to Day. The trouble is, she continually tries to draw universal conclusions from her own (again, very specific) experiences.
I personally found it difficult to relate to Day. She frets about having toooo maaaaany friends and doesn't have time for them all. (I can honestly say I've never had too many friends and often had too few.) She's extremely focused on 'hugging and crying, learning and growing', while I? idk? mostly want to have fun with my friends? She dismisses "activity buddies" and the concept of hobbies in general, while I love hobbies and am always looking for activity buddies (WILL ANYONE GO ICE SKATING WITH ME, I'M NOT KIDDING). Her perspective is very London, very upper-middle-class. Her infertility struggles appear to overshadow everything in her life. (Warning: there's a lot of infertility stuff in this book.)
The second half of Friendaholic descends into women's-magazine-style puff (some people say social media makes them feel lonely, while others find it a useful way to keep in touch! would you believe it!). There's a level of waffle that honestly should have been cut by an editor.
The effort to bring in other perspectives feels undercooked. The two-page friendship diaries from other people are lacking in context and therefore unengaging. The tendency to quote Day's conversations with friends verbatim adds more bloat to an already bloated book.
I'd love to read a considered, thoughtful book on friendship by an author who really has something to say. But this ain't it.
However, I think it's less because this book is stellar (it's #mid), and more because friendship doesn't get talked about enough in our society. For me personally, failed friendships have left lasting scars on my soul; the successful ones mean more to me than I can say. Yet we rarely stop to examine those hurts and joys; family and romance take up all the air in the proverbial room.
Anyway, enough about friendship in general and onto Friendaholic as a book. Its first few chapters are its strongest, as Elizabeth Day recounts various friendships in her life (the childhood friend, the college friend, the frienemy, the date who turned into a friend). These recollections are warm and vivid, but very, very specific to Day. The trouble is, she continually tries to draw universal conclusions from her own (again, very specific) experiences.
I personally found it difficult to relate to Day. She frets about having toooo maaaaany friends and doesn't have time for them all. (I can honestly say I've never had too many friends and often had too few.) She's extremely focused on 'hugging and crying, learning and growing', while I? idk? mostly want to have fun with my friends? She dismisses "activity buddies" and the concept of hobbies in general, while I love hobbies and am always looking for activity buddies (WILL ANYONE GO ICE SKATING WITH ME, I'M NOT KIDDING). Her perspective is very London, very upper-middle-class. Her infertility struggles appear to overshadow everything in her life. (Warning: there's a lot of infertility stuff in this book.)
The second half of Friendaholic descends into women's-magazine-style puff (some people say social media makes them feel lonely, while others find it a useful way to keep in touch! would you believe it!). There's a level of waffle that honestly should have been cut by an editor.
The effort to bring in other perspectives feels undercooked. The two-page friendship diaries from other people are lacking in context and therefore unengaging. The tendency to quote Day's conversations with friends verbatim adds more bloat to an already bloated book.
I'd love to read a considered, thoughtful book on friendship by an author who really has something to say. But this ain't it.
June 26, 2023
This book absolutely hit the spot for me, and it’s been a long time since a book has got me this good. This examination on friendship; as a phenomenon, as a life force, as a thing that shapes our lives and our selves, truly captured my attention and my imagination. I think Day does such a good job of weaving and balancing enough research to make this robust, with personal reflection and anecdotes which make it compelling, and crafts this in such a way that opens the reader to reflection. I’ve thought lots while reading this about my friends, and about how I act as a friend, and came out of this reading experience feeling I better understood what friendship means in my life, how to be a better friend, and with more conscious gratitude for my friends than I have had in some time. A warm, vibrant, engaging read. Loved it.
February 27, 2023
I so wanted to love this but it just felt like the author was trying to wrangle a cat into a bag.
There are some neat observations- I particularly liked the references to the solar system - but these are buried beneath a marshmallow of slightly self-indulgent waffle.
It seems like a sad indictment of society that we even need to try and analyse friendships but the author sums it up herself….”We don’t have the terminology and until we sneak it into existence, it is difficult to express what we mean with any precision”
Perhaps she should have left it there.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy.
There are some neat observations- I particularly liked the references to the solar system - but these are buried beneath a marshmallow of slightly self-indulgent waffle.
It seems like a sad indictment of society that we even need to try and analyse friendships but the author sums it up herself….”We don’t have the terminology and until we sneak it into existence, it is difficult to express what we mean with any precision”
Perhaps she should have left it there.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy.
April 6, 2023
A book about Elizabeth’s infertility (trigger warning!!!) thinly veiled as a book about friendship.
The friendship parts were good but ultimately this book is a scam. I don’t care about your womb, sorry!!!
The friendship parts were good but ultimately this book is a scam. I don’t care about your womb, sorry!!!
January 17, 2024
I’m about halfway through the book but I doubt I’ll finish it because it’s making me furious. Apart from being a cheap memoir disguised as a reflection on friendship (so it’s not what it says on the cover), so far this book has been a concentrate of middle-class presumptuousness and emotional unavailability. I got to the part where the author discusses conflict in friendships and how she’s a conflict avoider. She talks to a friend whom she considers great at handling conflict. When asked for advice, he says that when he feels like there’s something wrong in a friendship he ignores the friend’s calls for a while and then, when he feels like it, he will eventually pick up the phone and explain what’s wrong. The author’s response to this piece of advice? “Wow, that’s so emotionally healthy!”. Is it? Giving a friend the silent treatment until you feel like explaining yourself? Please don’t take advice from this book. Maybe I have a different idea of what honesty in friendship means, but this book just made me sad.
January 17, 2024
Já tinha este livro debaixo de olho há algum tempo, desde que me cruzei com a capa lindíssima da versão original nas estantes da Salted Books. Acabei por ler em português por estar incluído no Kobo Plus (e com a mesma capa linda, OBRIGADA PORTUGAL!).
O tema da amizade é algo que me tem interessado muito nos últimos tempos. Sinto que estamos finalmente a perceber que nem todo o amor é romântico e que as relações platónicas tem um peso igual ou maior na nossa vida. Este livro aborda vários tipos de amizade sempre baseados na experiência pessoal da autora, o que lhe dá um cunho muito próprio, mas também com muita informação estatística e científica. Acabei por me relacionar muito com algumas das lutas travadas pela autora neste campo da sua vida, e consegui tirar alguns ensinamentos destas páginas. Contudo, não vou negar que esperava que o livro abordasse ainda mais vertentes da amizade, algo que só não é possível porque lá está, é baseado na experiência pessoal da autora.
Sinto que está uma boa tradução, mas acho que teria apreciado mais a leitura no seu original, uma vez que a autora é britânica e é muito difícil fazer transparecer esse tipo de humor na nossa língua.
O tema da amizade é algo que me tem interessado muito nos últimos tempos. Sinto que estamos finalmente a perceber que nem todo o amor é romântico e que as relações platónicas tem um peso igual ou maior na nossa vida. Este livro aborda vários tipos de amizade sempre baseados na experiência pessoal da autora, o que lhe dá um cunho muito próprio, mas também com muita informação estatística e científica. Acabei por me relacionar muito com algumas das lutas travadas pela autora neste campo da sua vida, e consegui tirar alguns ensinamentos destas páginas. Contudo, não vou negar que esperava que o livro abordasse ainda mais vertentes da amizade, algo que só não é possível porque lá está, é baseado na experiência pessoal da autora.
Sinto que está uma boa tradução, mas acho que teria apreciado mais a leitura no seu original, uma vez que a autora é britânica e é muito difícil fazer transparecer esse tipo de humor na nossa língua.
December 29, 2023
I saw Elizabeth Day at a book event recently talking about this book, which I'd previously heard of but wasn't sure if I would pick up... well her talk about this book changed that, it sounded utterly fascinating and it was!
SYNOPSIS:
"As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren't they just as – if not more – important? So why is it hard to find the right words to express what these uniquely complex bonds mean to us? In Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to answer these questions."
MY THOUGHTS:
💞 Friendship, particularly from a woman's perspective, is a fascinating relationship dynamic and as many of us have, I've been through a journey as I get older on how I value or measure friendship.
💞 I loved how Day approach this concept, from her early years through to today, and how her friendships (and many of the readers - well certainly me!) have evolved. But it's also sprinkled with a lot of research studies and historical references on this type of relationship in comparison to romantic ones.
💞 I spent a lot of my time reading this book and thinking "Yes that happened to me" or "OMG that's me" or "I do/did that", so I feel it's a sign of a good book when so much of it relates or I feel seen.
💞 I loved the exploration of not just what friendship is and means to people but that it's okay to end friendships, just as it is to end other relationships. And that it's not all about how many friends you have but the value you bring to your life.
💞 I loved the structure of the book, with chapters about societal change e.g. "double tap to like" and "ghosting" interspersed with interviews with friends about friendship e.g. "Clemmie: Can friendships withstand big life shifts".
💞 And also Day brings her lovely writing style of honesty and humour which meant I devoured this in just a few days!
A fascinating read that I would highly recommend to all my friends and non-friends 😉
SYNOPSIS:
"As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren't they just as – if not more – important? So why is it hard to find the right words to express what these uniquely complex bonds mean to us? In Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to answer these questions."
MY THOUGHTS:
💞 Friendship, particularly from a woman's perspective, is a fascinating relationship dynamic and as many of us have, I've been through a journey as I get older on how I value or measure friendship.
💞 I loved how Day approach this concept, from her early years through to today, and how her friendships (and many of the readers - well certainly me!) have evolved. But it's also sprinkled with a lot of research studies and historical references on this type of relationship in comparison to romantic ones.
💞 I spent a lot of my time reading this book and thinking "Yes that happened to me" or "OMG that's me" or "I do/did that", so I feel it's a sign of a good book when so much of it relates or I feel seen.
💞 I loved the exploration of not just what friendship is and means to people but that it's okay to end friendships, just as it is to end other relationships. And that it's not all about how many friends you have but the value you bring to your life.
💞 I loved the structure of the book, with chapters about societal change e.g. "double tap to like" and "ghosting" interspersed with interviews with friends about friendship e.g. "Clemmie: Can friendships withstand big life shifts".
💞 And also Day brings her lovely writing style of honesty and humour which meant I devoured this in just a few days!
A fascinating read that I would highly recommend to all my friends and non-friends 😉
August 10, 2023
Elizabeth Day talks a lot but says nothing of substance. The reading experiance of this is like trudging through a dull persons diary.
December 18, 2024
So...another absolute doozy to add to all the other miserable reading experiences I’ve suffered through this past year. This one was a herculean effort to plough through, so I’m responding with a suitably overlong review. Call it an ironic counterpoint, or a pointless call-out from a moronic cunt, whatever. I just don’t care any more.
Okay. So, I know that this book probably – by which I mean definitely – wasn’t intended for me. I knew that going into it, which was actually one of the reasons I decided to read it:
“Read outside your comfort zone, Bex”
I tried to reason with myself.
“You might end up liking it, or at the very least learn something interesting or valuable from it.”
Well I definitely learned something. I learned that I despise Elizabeth Day (and everyone involved in giving the green-light to this stultifyingly banal book) with the kind of fury a sane and compassionate person would normally reserve for the current UK Labour government (who I’d bet money on Liz having voted for).
The grim realisation that I was not going to enjoy the upcoming 400 pages of Miss Day’s dross, washed over me like a bucket of lukewarm ‘European Roller’ vomit. Immediately thrust into the book’s central conceit (and trust me, there’s more than enough “conceit” going on in this inartfully executed dumpster-fire) I was beset with a grudging trepidity as our esteemed Guardian columnist confessed to being someone who "has too many friends". And if this sounds like a bit of a humble-brag, it probably is...at least partly; because Liz is also an imbecilic, wannabe people-pleaser, who somehow came to the conclusion that she was providing a form of philanthropic charitable service to all the poor buggers whose lives she would immediately thrust herself into, the minute she laid eyes on them.
Because more means more, right?
Not in an attention economy love, and all the pseudo-academic linking to references from anyone who has ever written about friendship – from the ancient Greeks to the most recently published sociologists – wasn’t enough to try and make anyone with half a brain think that what we were being presented with, was anything other than a pathetically self-absorbed vanity project; the premise of this book was basically dreamed up on the fly, purely because her agent asked her “what are you passionate about?” They obviously just wanted her to write another tedious tract to sell to other idiotic women who need self-help manuals to operate their own toilet cisterns, but her initial response of “cats?” wasn’t going to cut it. So she just threw up her hands and said “collecting friends?” like some crazy, feminist, philatelist who’s been curating a series of special issue pfp images in her downtime. (No, I’m not making that up, she literally admits to this in her “Acknowledgments” section, right at the end of the book. Yeah, thanks for saving that little titbit for the final kick in the teeth, Liz. Nothing says “here is a piece of writing I have been longing to write for years and have finally gotten the chance to make it happen!” like it being the second thing to come to your mind after “cats?”)
And after the startlingly anodyne revelation that she’s an absolute mong for thinking people are like Pokemon (she really does want to catch them ALL) we get a quick nod to an essay written by Cicero and a few haphazardly included factoids about the number of friends the average person has as per the country they live in, aaaaand…. it’s all downhill from there.
But, lest you be thinking too badly of our Lizzie here, let me just reassure you that she does in fact go to great pains to collect people from every single possible demographic she can think of. And just to prove that, she introduces us to a gay friend, a Sikh friend, a Muslim friend, a crippled friend (the friend uses the “crip” descriptor herself – I’m not just being a prick), a neurodivergent Iraqi friend, a capital-B-Black friend, a non-binary-queer-something-not-white-but-I-don’t-care-enough-to-go-look-up-their-entire-IdPol-description-friend, and her best friend who is a psychologist (which is either the only way they were able to put up with this tart’s drivel for so many years...or a career they felt that had to go into to try and figure out a way to sort said tart out. Either way, I still don’t care.)
And on top of not being racist, sexist, Islamophobic, ableist, homophobic – or any of the other mortal sins Liz probably (definitely) fears being called – she is also a truly magnanimous being, so free from ageist prejudices, that she also includes a friend who is a pensioner, a friend who is 20 years older than her, and a friend who is a 10 year old boy.
(A 10 year old boy by the way, who summed up the entire book in the following observation that was infinitely more astute than anything Liz was able to think up for herself: “I’m trying not to be sexist – if boys fall out, they just shove each other and say ‘You did it!’ ‘No, you did!’ ‘No you did it!’ until one of them says ‘Yeah okay I did it.’ And the other one goes, ‘Told you so’. Then that’s it. The girls in my school spend most of their break-time and lunch-time taking about friendship problems when they could just say ‘Soz’ and move on.” This lad Wilkie gets it. I just hope that he manages to disabuse himself of the misplaced notion that it’s “sexist” to acknowledge the difference between the two sexes, before he grows up to be the kind of man who unironically listens to James O’Brien on talk radio, without wanting to punch the smug git repeatedly in the throat.)
I mean it when I say she was out there collating interviews from people of every colour, creed, religion, caste, and category in the catalogue of human beings. Only, it was totally just because she wanted to make everyone on the planet “feel seen!”) I shit you not, she uses the phrase “I felt seen” twice in this book and refers to the making of other people “feel seen” another couple of times to boot. (Yes it made me want to stab myself in the eye with a solid Montegrappa Venetia every time I read it. No, I did not give in to temptation; there are far too many other good books out there for me to want to ruin my chances of enjoying/liking/loving, purely because of the mere existence of this wretched woman and her multiple treatises of tripe.) If only we were all as compassionate and considerate as Liz...we’d like, have world peace and free transgender surgeries for all illegal migrants and/or incarcerated individuals, with a selfless siren like this at the helm:
“But any conversation about friendship can’t just include one person talking. That’s why I’ve tried to include as many different voices as possible, to round out my own necessarily narrow perceptions.”
Aww...she’s just so freaking thoughtful, y’all? How could anyone NOT want to be included in one of her many and varied, compartmentalised (her words, not mine) WhatsApp friendship groups? Urgh; gag me with a fucking spoon Liz. The reason you did all of this careful traipsing through the entire catalogue of human characteristics, was your inherent need to broadcast a performative exercise designed to make you look like the most graciously considerate, sedulously box-ticking slave to identity politics that one needs to be, in order to exist in the pish-peddling world of addlepates who get paid to write for The Observer. You’ve stewed in all this media bollocks for so long that you automatically feel the need to prostrate yourself upon the altar of progressiveness and apologise for your privilege – both implicitly and explicitly – throughout a book that ended up being a far sorrier mess than you, the author, had sufficient actual self-awareness to see for yourself. You cos-play empathy with all the faux earnestness of a YouTube apology:
“Perhaps we also need to start introducing the idea of ‘friendship diversity’”
Perhaps you need to consider a residential stay in a padded bloody cell, you sociopathic weirdo. Gah!
So, once she’d made sure to ward off any potential accusations of not checking her own privilege, Lizzie, like every other lunkheaded middle-aged broad who fears the pitchforks more than she does the ‘Sense’ or ‘Sensibility’ of her own book pitches, (yes I’m using a book reference because being, like, super-mega-literary in her own reading material, our incredibly quirky gal made sure to reference Jane Austen at least twice, because...culture...or some shit...I don’t know...she went to university y’know, so like...uh...it’s relatable?) Elizabeth then decided to sprinkle these weird little mini-chapter anecdotes called “The Friendship Tapes” - featuring the same people she talked about in the actual chapters – all throughout the book, like she felt she needed to pad out her already tortuously meandering manuscript with even more pointlessly trite crap. (Whoever did the editing for this book should be shot in the head and thrown in the tide. #JustSaying) These odd little interjections made little sense and obliterated any semblance of a cohesive, narrative timeline, that was supposed to be taking 'little-miss-can’t-say-no' on her “jurrrrneeeeeyyyy” from discovering she was a batshit insane fuckwit, to some kind of satisfying conclusion.
Reader, there was no satisfying conclusion. Not unless you count my celebrating – out loud – to the other half, that “OMIGOD I DID IT! I FINALLY MADE MY WAY THROUGH THIS ENTIRE PILE OF SHIT WITHOUT MURDERING ANYBODY!” as soon as I was done; because I have never been so satisfied to see the end to a book before in my entire life. (And I read ‘Hell House’ for “Spooktober” remember? I’ve really been through some shit this year folks.)
Anyway, fast forward to another load of unnecessary cobblers, where an inordinate amount of space is taken up with talk of infertility and miscarriages and other things that she seems to think she could just shoehorn into the topic supposedly at hand, because it’s something she discussed with some friends but not with others...whatever. I’d probably have more sympathy if she hadn’t admitted to having already discussed this whole palaver in a previous book.
And on her podcast (of course she has a fucking podcast).
And in newspaper columns.
And magazines.
And probably to anyone she sat next to on a god-damn train journey too.
It’s not like she hasn’t gotten mileage out of her misfortune, so having to read about how her uterus has some weird deviated septum shape to it, followed by the procedure she had to fly to Greece to have performed (because the clinic was run by a woman...which apparently is super-important when considering surgical interventions...always gotta be keeping an eye on the old progressive stack, amirite?) and all the subsequent gross bodily stuff that followed? Um...WTF? Why is this included in here? It’s not related to the actual point (I’m generously allowing for the fact that any of this utter fuckwittery had any actual point to it at all) and it just felt like more self-indulgent trauma-dumping that really ought to have been left out. I’m sorry your malformed womb meant you had a crap time of trying to pregnant Liz, but I really don’t care about your “heart shaped box”.
I know, I know. I’m a horrible, insensitive person. But at least I’m not trying to foist myself upon every single human being who crosses my path. Yes, I get that Liz is a neurotic basket case so thoroughly riddled with self-doubt that she would likely seek approval regarding the colour of her lipstick from the binman and probably consult some astrological bollocks before making any more decisions about her future. No I cannot relate to her self-conscious need for external validation. I’m not what you’d call an insecure person, so I struggled to empathise with her; whilst she did nothing to convince me that I ought to be making the effort. I’ve never been lonely, but I’ve spent plenty of time alone. I need time alone. I enjoy my own quiet time and definitely do not need some random woman I met at a spin class, or a chick I went to school with, to cosset me, cluck affectionately my way and act like an emotional tampon, every time anything vaguely upsetting presents itself. I’ve never offloaded any “big-sads” to my friends. I don’t even want/require them to be in regular contact with me.
When it comes to friendships, I can offer you absolutely nothing, and will do my damnedest to adhere to that arrangement.
The majority of people are of little interest to me, and I rarely want/need anything from others, so there’s little point in my summoning a little cheerleading squad to be in my immediate vicinity for an extended period of time. And the older you get, the more you need your own space – mentally and physically – away from being in constant contact with other people. Good friends already know, deep down, that y'all are important to one another; that your friendship exists in ever-evolving shapes and sizes over time, but you don't need to keep a constant eye on it. It doesn't need routinely symbolic parades of affection and emotion and appreciation and interrogation to keep every single connection, sparkling like clean silverware that requires constant buffing to remain aglow.
And that is a conclusion that Liz herself eventually comes to, after the kind of inscrutably meandering bollocks that makes it hard to tell whether this entire book was written by an actual person – and edited by another actual person – or if the whole affair just was AI generated guff. Maybe in a few years from now we’ll be contacted by some university student who it turns out had created this entire pile of codswallop for his sociological study, designed to show us just how easily we’ll go along with any old gubbins, so long as it’s presented to us in a way that makes up for the lack of any real, tangible substance. Kinda like the way Lizzie repeatedly throws herself into adopting the habits and personalities of every friend and love interest she collides with along the way? Huh?
Yes, this book was excruciating, but I made myself read through to the end so I could actually give my proper opinion on the text in its entirety. It’s far too long, even for the vapid kernel of an idea that might have shown a little more promise in the vaguely capable hands of pretty much anyone else; however Liz simply could not focus on any one thing properly, so what we’ve ended up with is a 400 page rambling mess that’s so bloated from all the vapid navel-gazing, it makes a garrulous gobshite like me appear positively Hemingway-esque by comparison. Ridiculously indulgent, it's the little interesting references to other works that probably make up the best part of the book. Because despite Miss Day repeatedly insisting that there just hasn’t been a lot written about friendship, or even much in the way of language available for the discussion of platonic love, all those references really do is prove that this topic has indeed been covered by a vast number of people over the years, and all of them light years better than this drivel.
1/5 stars from me. Go read literally anything else.
Okay. So, I know that this book probably – by which I mean definitely – wasn’t intended for me. I knew that going into it, which was actually one of the reasons I decided to read it:
“Read outside your comfort zone, Bex”
I tried to reason with myself.
“You might end up liking it, or at the very least learn something interesting or valuable from it.”
Well I definitely learned something. I learned that I despise Elizabeth Day (and everyone involved in giving the green-light to this stultifyingly banal book) with the kind of fury a sane and compassionate person would normally reserve for the current UK Labour government (who I’d bet money on Liz having voted for).
The grim realisation that I was not going to enjoy the upcoming 400 pages of Miss Day’s dross, washed over me like a bucket of lukewarm ‘European Roller’ vomit. Immediately thrust into the book’s central conceit (and trust me, there’s more than enough “conceit” going on in this inartfully executed dumpster-fire) I was beset with a grudging trepidity as our esteemed Guardian columnist confessed to being someone who "has too many friends". And if this sounds like a bit of a humble-brag, it probably is...at least partly; because Liz is also an imbecilic, wannabe people-pleaser, who somehow came to the conclusion that she was providing a form of philanthropic charitable service to all the poor buggers whose lives she would immediately thrust herself into, the minute she laid eyes on them.
Because more means more, right?
Not in an attention economy love, and all the pseudo-academic linking to references from anyone who has ever written about friendship – from the ancient Greeks to the most recently published sociologists – wasn’t enough to try and make anyone with half a brain think that what we were being presented with, was anything other than a pathetically self-absorbed vanity project; the premise of this book was basically dreamed up on the fly, purely because her agent asked her “what are you passionate about?” They obviously just wanted her to write another tedious tract to sell to other idiotic women who need self-help manuals to operate their own toilet cisterns, but her initial response of “cats?” wasn’t going to cut it. So she just threw up her hands and said “collecting friends?” like some crazy, feminist, philatelist who’s been curating a series of special issue pfp images in her downtime. (No, I’m not making that up, she literally admits to this in her “Acknowledgments” section, right at the end of the book. Yeah, thanks for saving that little titbit for the final kick in the teeth, Liz. Nothing says “here is a piece of writing I have been longing to write for years and have finally gotten the chance to make it happen!” like it being the second thing to come to your mind after “cats?”)
And after the startlingly anodyne revelation that she’s an absolute mong for thinking people are like Pokemon (she really does want to catch them ALL) we get a quick nod to an essay written by Cicero and a few haphazardly included factoids about the number of friends the average person has as per the country they live in, aaaaand…. it’s all downhill from there.
But, lest you be thinking too badly of our Lizzie here, let me just reassure you that she does in fact go to great pains to collect people from every single possible demographic she can think of. And just to prove that, she introduces us to a gay friend, a Sikh friend, a Muslim friend, a crippled friend (the friend uses the “crip” descriptor herself – I’m not just being a prick), a neurodivergent Iraqi friend, a capital-B-Black friend, a non-binary-queer-something-not-white-but-I-don’t-care-enough-to-go-look-up-their-entire-IdPol-description-friend, and her best friend who is a psychologist (which is either the only way they were able to put up with this tart’s drivel for so many years...or a career they felt that had to go into to try and figure out a way to sort said tart out. Either way, I still don’t care.)
And on top of not being racist, sexist, Islamophobic, ableist, homophobic – or any of the other mortal sins Liz probably (definitely) fears being called – she is also a truly magnanimous being, so free from ageist prejudices, that she also includes a friend who is a pensioner, a friend who is 20 years older than her, and a friend who is a 10 year old boy.
(A 10 year old boy by the way, who summed up the entire book in the following observation that was infinitely more astute than anything Liz was able to think up for herself: “I’m trying not to be sexist – if boys fall out, they just shove each other and say ‘You did it!’ ‘No, you did!’ ‘No you did it!’ until one of them says ‘Yeah okay I did it.’ And the other one goes, ‘Told you so’. Then that’s it. The girls in my school spend most of their break-time and lunch-time taking about friendship problems when they could just say ‘Soz’ and move on.” This lad Wilkie gets it. I just hope that he manages to disabuse himself of the misplaced notion that it’s “sexist” to acknowledge the difference between the two sexes, before he grows up to be the kind of man who unironically listens to James O’Brien on talk radio, without wanting to punch the smug git repeatedly in the throat.)
I mean it when I say she was out there collating interviews from people of every colour, creed, religion, caste, and category in the catalogue of human beings. Only, it was totally just because she wanted to make everyone on the planet “feel seen!”) I shit you not, she uses the phrase “I felt seen” twice in this book and refers to the making of other people “feel seen” another couple of times to boot. (Yes it made me want to stab myself in the eye with a solid Montegrappa Venetia every time I read it. No, I did not give in to temptation; there are far too many other good books out there for me to want to ruin my chances of enjoying/liking/loving, purely because of the mere existence of this wretched woman and her multiple treatises of tripe.) If only we were all as compassionate and considerate as Liz...we’d like, have world peace and free transgender surgeries for all illegal migrants and/or incarcerated individuals, with a selfless siren like this at the helm:
“But any conversation about friendship can’t just include one person talking. That’s why I’ve tried to include as many different voices as possible, to round out my own necessarily narrow perceptions.”
Aww...she’s just so freaking thoughtful, y’all? How could anyone NOT want to be included in one of her many and varied, compartmentalised (her words, not mine) WhatsApp friendship groups? Urgh; gag me with a fucking spoon Liz. The reason you did all of this careful traipsing through the entire catalogue of human characteristics, was your inherent need to broadcast a performative exercise designed to make you look like the most graciously considerate, sedulously box-ticking slave to identity politics that one needs to be, in order to exist in the pish-peddling world of addlepates who get paid to write for The Observer. You’ve stewed in all this media bollocks for so long that you automatically feel the need to prostrate yourself upon the altar of progressiveness and apologise for your privilege – both implicitly and explicitly – throughout a book that ended up being a far sorrier mess than you, the author, had sufficient actual self-awareness to see for yourself. You cos-play empathy with all the faux earnestness of a YouTube apology:
“Perhaps we also need to start introducing the idea of ‘friendship diversity’”
Perhaps you need to consider a residential stay in a padded bloody cell, you sociopathic weirdo. Gah!
So, once she’d made sure to ward off any potential accusations of not checking her own privilege, Lizzie, like every other lunkheaded middle-aged broad who fears the pitchforks more than she does the ‘Sense’ or ‘Sensibility’ of her own book pitches, (yes I’m using a book reference because being, like, super-mega-literary in her own reading material, our incredibly quirky gal made sure to reference Jane Austen at least twice, because...culture...or some shit...I don’t know...she went to university y’know, so like...uh...it’s relatable?) Elizabeth then decided to sprinkle these weird little mini-chapter anecdotes called “The Friendship Tapes” - featuring the same people she talked about in the actual chapters – all throughout the book, like she felt she needed to pad out her already tortuously meandering manuscript with even more pointlessly trite crap. (Whoever did the editing for this book should be shot in the head and thrown in the tide. #JustSaying) These odd little interjections made little sense and obliterated any semblance of a cohesive, narrative timeline, that was supposed to be taking 'little-miss-can’t-say-no' on her “jurrrrneeeeeyyyy” from discovering she was a batshit insane fuckwit, to some kind of satisfying conclusion.
Reader, there was no satisfying conclusion. Not unless you count my celebrating – out loud – to the other half, that “OMIGOD I DID IT! I FINALLY MADE MY WAY THROUGH THIS ENTIRE PILE OF SHIT WITHOUT MURDERING ANYBODY!” as soon as I was done; because I have never been so satisfied to see the end to a book before in my entire life. (And I read ‘Hell House’ for “Spooktober” remember? I’ve really been through some shit this year folks.)
Anyway, fast forward to another load of unnecessary cobblers, where an inordinate amount of space is taken up with talk of infertility and miscarriages and other things that she seems to think she could just shoehorn into the topic supposedly at hand, because it’s something she discussed with some friends but not with others...whatever. I’d probably have more sympathy if she hadn’t admitted to having already discussed this whole palaver in a previous book.
And on her podcast (of course she has a fucking podcast).
And in newspaper columns.
And magazines.
And probably to anyone she sat next to on a god-damn train journey too.
It’s not like she hasn’t gotten mileage out of her misfortune, so having to read about how her uterus has some weird deviated septum shape to it, followed by the procedure she had to fly to Greece to have performed (because the clinic was run by a woman...which apparently is super-important when considering surgical interventions...always gotta be keeping an eye on the old progressive stack, amirite?) and all the subsequent gross bodily stuff that followed? Um...WTF? Why is this included in here? It’s not related to the actual point (I’m generously allowing for the fact that any of this utter fuckwittery had any actual point to it at all) and it just felt like more self-indulgent trauma-dumping that really ought to have been left out. I’m sorry your malformed womb meant you had a crap time of trying to pregnant Liz, but I really don’t care about your “heart shaped box”.
I know, I know. I’m a horrible, insensitive person. But at least I’m not trying to foist myself upon every single human being who crosses my path. Yes, I get that Liz is a neurotic basket case so thoroughly riddled with self-doubt that she would likely seek approval regarding the colour of her lipstick from the binman and probably consult some astrological bollocks before making any more decisions about her future. No I cannot relate to her self-conscious need for external validation. I’m not what you’d call an insecure person, so I struggled to empathise with her; whilst she did nothing to convince me that I ought to be making the effort. I’ve never been lonely, but I’ve spent plenty of time alone. I need time alone. I enjoy my own quiet time and definitely do not need some random woman I met at a spin class, or a chick I went to school with, to cosset me, cluck affectionately my way and act like an emotional tampon, every time anything vaguely upsetting presents itself. I’ve never offloaded any “big-sads” to my friends. I don’t even want/require them to be in regular contact with me.
When it comes to friendships, I can offer you absolutely nothing, and will do my damnedest to adhere to that arrangement.
The majority of people are of little interest to me, and I rarely want/need anything from others, so there’s little point in my summoning a little cheerleading squad to be in my immediate vicinity for an extended period of time. And the older you get, the more you need your own space – mentally and physically – away from being in constant contact with other people. Good friends already know, deep down, that y'all are important to one another; that your friendship exists in ever-evolving shapes and sizes over time, but you don't need to keep a constant eye on it. It doesn't need routinely symbolic parades of affection and emotion and appreciation and interrogation to keep every single connection, sparkling like clean silverware that requires constant buffing to remain aglow.
And that is a conclusion that Liz herself eventually comes to, after the kind of inscrutably meandering bollocks that makes it hard to tell whether this entire book was written by an actual person – and edited by another actual person – or if the whole affair just was AI generated guff. Maybe in a few years from now we’ll be contacted by some university student who it turns out had created this entire pile of codswallop for his sociological study, designed to show us just how easily we’ll go along with any old gubbins, so long as it’s presented to us in a way that makes up for the lack of any real, tangible substance. Kinda like the way Lizzie repeatedly throws herself into adopting the habits and personalities of every friend and love interest she collides with along the way? Huh?
Yes, this book was excruciating, but I made myself read through to the end so I could actually give my proper opinion on the text in its entirety. It’s far too long, even for the vapid kernel of an idea that might have shown a little more promise in the vaguely capable hands of pretty much anyone else; however Liz simply could not focus on any one thing properly, so what we’ve ended up with is a 400 page rambling mess that’s so bloated from all the vapid navel-gazing, it makes a garrulous gobshite like me appear positively Hemingway-esque by comparison. Ridiculously indulgent, it's the little interesting references to other works that probably make up the best part of the book. Because despite Miss Day repeatedly insisting that there just hasn’t been a lot written about friendship, or even much in the way of language available for the discussion of platonic love, all those references really do is prove that this topic has indeed been covered by a vast number of people over the years, and all of them light years better than this drivel.
1/5 stars from me. Go read literally anything else.
February 20, 2025
I wanted to like that book much more than I did. And, don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it but there were things that I just found slightly rushed or too self-absorbed. Maybe it just needed to be edited a bit and made more concise.
Elizabeth Day gives us snippets of her own experiences of being a friend, having friendships and how those platonic relationships have been affecting her life.
Overall it's a good overview of what a friendship is, what different forms it can take and how much it affects us in our every day lives.
Elizabeth Day gives us snippets of her own experiences of being a friend, having friendships and how those platonic relationships have been affecting her life.
Overall it's a good overview of what a friendship is, what different forms it can take and how much it affects us in our every day lives.
June 1, 2024
In the Introduction to this book, author Elizabeth Day recounts the epiphany that led her understand that “Friendship” has been the passion of her life. I understood exactly what she meant; indeed, I have often described friendship as my “life’s project” or “purpose.” I am deeply curious about other people and endlessly fascinated by what they think and feel; I truly want to hear ALL of their stories. If I have any gift, I think it is the gift of being able to hold many people close at the same time. I *mostly* think of my friendships as the great blessing of my life, and yet lately, I have begun to suspect that I simply do not have the emotional energy that is required for the maintenance of so many friendships. I have also realised that some of my closest friends feel uncomfortable about the fact that I call so many people “one of my best friends.”
Can a person do anything to excess, including friendship? I think that is probably the case, and this book attempts to explain why. At its best, friendship is the ultimate healing and nonjudgmental space, but it can also be an emotional crutch or something even more damaging. Choosing quantity over quality means we can miss out on the more profound emotional possibilities of friendship.
Day takes a mostly chronological approach in this book, which means she starts at the beginning: the school days in which she felt herself to be unpopular and largely friendless. For many years, collecting and cultivating friendships was a way of making herself feel “okay;” on a basic level, friendship was an external reinforcement that allowed her to persuade herself that she was basically likeable.
In some ways, I could identify with this: my own background includes an unpopular adolescence and an emotionally (and physically distant) marriage. Because I never had a friendship from my husband, I was always looking for it elsewhere. We moved often, and I made a couple of “best friends” everywhere we went - and then I attempted to keep all of those relationships close to me.
One of the notes that I took on the book had to do with “Dunbar’s number:” in other words, the British anthropologist’s Robin Dunbar’s belief that humans can only comfortably maintain about 150 “stable” relationships, which relates to both rustic communities and the average size of a Christmas card list. Dunbar describes the 150 as a series of concentric circles - with the innermost circle of intimates being 1.5 (a romantic partner and a best friend for some people; for others, just one of those); a circle of 5-6 particular intimates; a circle of 15 key people; and then 50 people who might be invited to a weekend BBQ; and then finally the 150 “wedding and funeral” people. As I cogitated on this, I realised that I lack the intimate circle entirely, but have tried to keep at least 15 people within the circle where there should be only 5. My large community of online friends - some of them now “in real life” friends as well - further complicates matters and means that I am rarely caught up with all of my messages on way too many platforms.
In a reasonable attempt to be as thorough as possible on the subject of friendship, Day explores various kinds of friendships and friendship pitfalls: everything from “frenemies” to “ghosting” to the pros and cons of online friendships. A standout for me was in her discussion of friendships “boundaries” - and her interview with a friend called Sharmaine on that subject. Like Day, I have some trouble with boundaries and it is something that I have been trying to address - with very mixed success - in the past year or two. Day has realised that she benefits from being friends who are highly boundaried - and I realised, with some reflection, that this is true of most of my closest friends as well. I need that from friends.
I came to this book ready to learn something and I think that it did have something to offer me. One of the most enlightening chapters came towards the end, when Day discussed her “best” friendship with Emma and they worked together to define friendship in its best and most productive sense. Day has realised that her own “metric” for friendship is “generosity of spirit:” the friendships that mean the most to her, that nourish and heal her, are the ones which are loving, nonjudgmental and non-demanding, but most importantly, the ones which will always, always trust her and give her the benefit of the doubt.
All of us meet people who come and go out of our lives; the majority of friendships won’t last forever, and whilst some of them gently fade, there are also some which break or rupture in a way that is painful for both friends. I particularly liked the way that Day applies her “generosity of spirit” to the friends who have let us down or even hurt us or maybe have just faded in importance through the passing of years.
Ironically, as I was finishing this book, an online friend said something to me that I found very hurtful. We are no longer as close as we once were, and this encounter will no doubt further fray our friendship. But I do believe, as Day does, that we can have a “generosity of spirit” towards friends that we have once valued and cherished - even if we have hurt them, and they have hurt us. As I have matured - both in myself, and in friendship - I, too, have learned the understanding that people are always undergoing their own difficulties, that “life is complicated,” and that “everyone bears personal suffering that we cannot possibly have access to.”
Friendship is not a numbers game, but maybe in a way it is. I truly believe that if you have authentic friendship chemistry with someone you will always have it, just like you know in your gut which friends are generously “for” you and which ones can only love you according to conditions which you may fail to meet. Liberation from being a “friendaholic” is truly knowing the difference.
Can a person do anything to excess, including friendship? I think that is probably the case, and this book attempts to explain why. At its best, friendship is the ultimate healing and nonjudgmental space, but it can also be an emotional crutch or something even more damaging. Choosing quantity over quality means we can miss out on the more profound emotional possibilities of friendship.
Day takes a mostly chronological approach in this book, which means she starts at the beginning: the school days in which she felt herself to be unpopular and largely friendless. For many years, collecting and cultivating friendships was a way of making herself feel “okay;” on a basic level, friendship was an external reinforcement that allowed her to persuade herself that she was basically likeable.
In some ways, I could identify with this: my own background includes an unpopular adolescence and an emotionally (and physically distant) marriage. Because I never had a friendship from my husband, I was always looking for it elsewhere. We moved often, and I made a couple of “best friends” everywhere we went - and then I attempted to keep all of those relationships close to me.
One of the notes that I took on the book had to do with “Dunbar’s number:” in other words, the British anthropologist’s Robin Dunbar’s belief that humans can only comfortably maintain about 150 “stable” relationships, which relates to both rustic communities and the average size of a Christmas card list. Dunbar describes the 150 as a series of concentric circles - with the innermost circle of intimates being 1.5 (a romantic partner and a best friend for some people; for others, just one of those); a circle of 5-6 particular intimates; a circle of 15 key people; and then 50 people who might be invited to a weekend BBQ; and then finally the 150 “wedding and funeral” people. As I cogitated on this, I realised that I lack the intimate circle entirely, but have tried to keep at least 15 people within the circle where there should be only 5. My large community of online friends - some of them now “in real life” friends as well - further complicates matters and means that I am rarely caught up with all of my messages on way too many platforms.
In a reasonable attempt to be as thorough as possible on the subject of friendship, Day explores various kinds of friendships and friendship pitfalls: everything from “frenemies” to “ghosting” to the pros and cons of online friendships. A standout for me was in her discussion of friendships “boundaries” - and her interview with a friend called Sharmaine on that subject. Like Day, I have some trouble with boundaries and it is something that I have been trying to address - with very mixed success - in the past year or two. Day has realised that she benefits from being friends who are highly boundaried - and I realised, with some reflection, that this is true of most of my closest friends as well. I need that from friends.
I came to this book ready to learn something and I think that it did have something to offer me. One of the most enlightening chapters came towards the end, when Day discussed her “best” friendship with Emma and they worked together to define friendship in its best and most productive sense. Day has realised that her own “metric” for friendship is “generosity of spirit:” the friendships that mean the most to her, that nourish and heal her, are the ones which are loving, nonjudgmental and non-demanding, but most importantly, the ones which will always, always trust her and give her the benefit of the doubt.
All of us meet people who come and go out of our lives; the majority of friendships won’t last forever, and whilst some of them gently fade, there are also some which break or rupture in a way that is painful for both friends. I particularly liked the way that Day applies her “generosity of spirit” to the friends who have let us down or even hurt us or maybe have just faded in importance through the passing of years.
Ironically, as I was finishing this book, an online friend said something to me that I found very hurtful. We are no longer as close as we once were, and this encounter will no doubt further fray our friendship. But I do believe, as Day does, that we can have a “generosity of spirit” towards friends that we have once valued and cherished - even if we have hurt them, and they have hurt us. As I have matured - both in myself, and in friendship - I, too, have learned the understanding that people are always undergoing their own difficulties, that “life is complicated,” and that “everyone bears personal suffering that we cannot possibly have access to.”
Friendship is not a numbers game, but maybe in a way it is. I truly believe that if you have authentic friendship chemistry with someone you will always have it, just like you know in your gut which friends are generously “for” you and which ones can only love you according to conditions which you may fail to meet. Liberation from being a “friendaholic” is truly knowing the difference.
September 1, 2023
I was really excited to read this as I thought it would help me be a better friend and strengthen friendships. I couldn’t take much from it as most of the case studies seem to be about the author feeling overwhelmed by keeping up with friends (which isn’t the case with me!)
The title makes more sense after reading it, she’s very open about her need for friendships… and I understand it’s a confessional; but I think she missed the opportunity to put herself in other people’s shoes and help those that have no friends, or struggle to make/maintain deep friendships.
The title makes more sense after reading it, she’s very open about her need for friendships… and I understand it’s a confessional; but I think she missed the opportunity to put herself in other people’s shoes and help those that have no friends, or struggle to make/maintain deep friendships.
December 9, 2023
This made me very reflective and there were some really strong chapters (the one on fertility/managing female friendships around parenthood in particular). I also love in general this was about friends! Such an underrepresented topic.
This being said, at points it felt a bit like reading self-therapy for past friendship dramas, a lot of the memoir/childhood stuff just didn’t add much (would have liked more research/science) and boy oh BOY were there a lot of heavy-handed metaphors.
This being said, at points it felt a bit like reading self-therapy for past friendship dramas, a lot of the memoir/childhood stuff just didn’t add much (would have liked more research/science) and boy oh BOY were there a lot of heavy-handed metaphors.
January 21, 2024
I had a real love-hate relationship with this book. I started off really not liking it and almost put it down, I just thought it came from a really privileged perspective and that wasn’t acknowledged enough - like addiction is a huge illness and saying your addicted to friendship is taking the piss a bit!! BUT, at the same time, some of the chapters were really enjoyable and thought provoking! Made my think about how much a I value my gal pals ❤️❤️
January 1, 2024
Ironic that this author calls others smug.
August 30, 2023
Ja hmm…. had er toch echt meer van verwacht! Op sommige delen interessant maar het bleek gewoon echt meer een boek te zijn over haar vriendschappen in plaats van vriendschappen in het algemeen, ik mis toch gewoon de wetenschap een beetje (ook al probeert ze die erbij te halen maar vaak veel te kort). En vooral in het eerste deel vond ik de auteur gewoon nogal onzeker?? Misschien omdat ik precies het tegenovergestelde ben maar girly je kan gewoon nee zeggen tegen mensen en grenzen stellen?
Vermakelijk en soms interessant but not it! Ik had denk ik de titel gewoon letterlijk moeten nemen als inhoud van het boek
Vermakelijk en soms interessant but not it! Ik had denk ik de titel gewoon letterlijk moeten nemen als inhoud van het boek
October 25, 2023
I found the topic interesting but I was not a fan of the writer. I couldn't relate to her upper middle class select group of well connected "bright young things" type friends.
She anecdotally talks of a time she met a friend and hilariously ordered almost everything off the menu "a plate would come and we'd want to try the next one just because it was so delicious". I spent a lot of my time missing the point of what she was trying to say because I was too busy rolling my eyes. I found the final two chapters more sincere but it was too little too late for me.
She anecdotally talks of a time she met a friend and hilariously ordered almost everything off the menu "a plate would come and we'd want to try the next one just because it was so delicious". I spent a lot of my time missing the point of what she was trying to say because I was too busy rolling my eyes. I found the final two chapters more sincere but it was too little too late for me.
December 31, 2023
if i speak ..
June 14, 2023
An amazing book that made me rethink some and validated other of my discoveries about friendship. I would really advise the audiobook.
May 30, 2023
Really enjoyed this book. I listened to the audiobook. I love Elizabeth Day’s writing and her reading of the book.
September 22, 2024
4.5 rounded down to 4 (ugh i don't even like saying that!!!) but only because of length and i will probably change my rating in a few days once i've had time to process just how much i loved this book. felt like a direct translation of my inner most thoughts. if you want a look inside my brain or are a girl or if you have even just one friend you should prob read this book
August 11, 2023
Do not read this book. It’s written by a narcissist. Who In her success likely got a five book deal so churned out this self indulgent waffle to justify why she has dumped so many friends. The underlying thread is that she used people when she needed them. Then dumped them when they had fulfilled her requirements. She has many friends. Wealth and privilege. Yet her only veiled attempt at acknowledging that. Is a disclosure at the beginning saying I interviewed a paraplegic neurodiverse veteran so that excuses my middle class woes me. The amount she talks about her miscarriages without warming people first. Is damn right ignorant. Not to mention she makes these vomit worthy ‘it was not you, it was me’ apologies to those friendships she used as fodder for the book. So sick of these Guardian reader Authors who churn out this type of self help bollocks to others. When they have never really know what it is like to suffer alone. Or be alone. The book is going on the bin instead of to the charity shop.
September 6, 2023
I really enjoyed this exploration into the value of friendships. As a bit of a friendaholic in my past too, there was a lot here I could relate too - anxious attachment style, need to feel loved and valued and fear of rejection. I, like Elizabeth, felt that quantity somehow reflected on my own self worth, and more friends would stave off the residual fear that adolescent bullying left me with.
The chapter on her fertility struggles also struck a profound chord. How our friends navigate our life events with us, can at times be very telling. And how we, in turn, can be a good friend and support others.
It's a book which prompted some self reflection and also immense gratitude for the wonderful people in my life I'm lucky enough to call my friends.
Ultimately, like Elizabeth, friends are utterly integral to my life and to read such a positive book celebrating that platonic love was heart warming.
The chapter on her fertility struggles also struck a profound chord. How our friends navigate our life events with us, can at times be very telling. And how we, in turn, can be a good friend and support others.
It's a book which prompted some self reflection and also immense gratitude for the wonderful people in my life I'm lucky enough to call my friends.
Ultimately, like Elizabeth, friends are utterly integral to my life and to read such a positive book celebrating that platonic love was heart warming.
May 9, 2024
REALLY didn’t like this (especially the second half) but it makes for cute book club discussions! Who was your first friend? Who’s your best friend? Where do you fall on When Harry Met Sally question? Great stuff! However, I wish I read a JSTOR article on friendship rather than 400 pages of this shit
November 14, 2024
Libro consigliatomi (piuttosto insistemente) da un'amica (ciao Ginni, se dovessi leggere questa recensione), libro che consiglierò (forse altrettanto insistentemente) alle mie amiche.
È un saggio, poco "scientifico" e molto narrativo, che cerca di esplorare cosa sono e come funzionano i rapporti di amicizia.
L'autrice parte dal presupposto che, al contrario dell'amore romantico, o tra genitori e figli, l'amicizia è un tipo di rapporto meno codificato, in cui non esistono milestones che segnano inequivocabilmente un progresso (come può essere il matrimonio) e per cui non esiste un linguaggio specifico utile a descrivere certe sensazioni o esperienze.
Prova dunque, attraverso le sua esperienze di amicizie fallite e di successo, con uomini e con donne, di vecchia data e recenti, ma anche servendosi di letteratura e studi scientifici in materia, a tracciare un quadro il più possibile completo di cosa significa essere amici: la nascita di un rapporto, la coltivazione e lo sviluppo, i paletti e i confini, la sincerità, il supporto, e tutto il resto.
Gli spunti interessanti sono numerosissimi e viene spontaneo provare a "incasellare" i propri rapporti nelle "categorie" che l'autrice prova a tratteggiare. Le riflessioni non sono quasi mai banali e generano anzi voglia di lavorare sui propri rapporti, riempiendoli di significato.
È un saggio, poco "scientifico" e molto narrativo, che cerca di esplorare cosa sono e come funzionano i rapporti di amicizia.
L'autrice parte dal presupposto che, al contrario dell'amore romantico, o tra genitori e figli, l'amicizia è un tipo di rapporto meno codificato, in cui non esistono milestones che segnano inequivocabilmente un progresso (come può essere il matrimonio) e per cui non esiste un linguaggio specifico utile a descrivere certe sensazioni o esperienze.
Prova dunque, attraverso le sua esperienze di amicizie fallite e di successo, con uomini e con donne, di vecchia data e recenti, ma anche servendosi di letteratura e studi scientifici in materia, a tracciare un quadro il più possibile completo di cosa significa essere amici: la nascita di un rapporto, la coltivazione e lo sviluppo, i paletti e i confini, la sincerità, il supporto, e tutto il resto.
Gli spunti interessanti sono numerosissimi e viene spontaneo provare a "incasellare" i propri rapporti nelle "categorie" che l'autrice prova a tratteggiare. Le riflessioni non sono quasi mai banali e generano anzi voglia di lavorare sui propri rapporti, riempiendoli di significato.
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