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Bad Friend: A Century of Revolutionary Friendships
'A hymn to friendship . . . Will leave you moved, hopeful and inspired in equal measure.' DAISY HAY
'I absolutely loved this book.' KATHERINE ANGEL
'I urge you to read it.' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB
'I'm grateful for Bad Friend.' AMY KEY
A rebellious new history of female friendship and timely reclamation of the 'bad friend'.
Move over idealised BFFs, glossy gal pals and indestructible work wives. Meet the bad friends. The dangerously romantic school girls of the 1900s. The office gossips of the 1930s. The mum cliques of the 1950s. The angry activists of the 1970s. The coven - women who choose to live together in old age - of the present day. These 'bad' friends broke the rules about femininity they didn't write. Their relationships were controlled, patrolled and judged too intimate, too consuming and in some cases, too powerful.
In this history of women's friendship, celebrated cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith reckons with the ways we understand this complex and vital connection. She takes us from Japan to the Ivory Coast, The Mindy Project to Zadie Smith's Swing Time, from prisons to film sets to hospital wards and elder communities, untangling the assumptions about good and bad friends we live by. Weaving together history, interviews and memoir, Bad Friend offers what's long a more expansive, more rebellious vision of friendship fit for twenty-first-century life.
'I absolutely loved this book.' KATHERINE ANGEL
'I urge you to read it.' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB
'I'm grateful for Bad Friend.' AMY KEY
A rebellious new history of female friendship and timely reclamation of the 'bad friend'.
Move over idealised BFFs, glossy gal pals and indestructible work wives. Meet the bad friends. The dangerously romantic school girls of the 1900s. The office gossips of the 1930s. The mum cliques of the 1950s. The angry activists of the 1970s. The coven - women who choose to live together in old age - of the present day. These 'bad' friends broke the rules about femininity they didn't write. Their relationships were controlled, patrolled and judged too intimate, too consuming and in some cases, too powerful.
In this history of women's friendship, celebrated cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith reckons with the ways we understand this complex and vital connection. She takes us from Japan to the Ivory Coast, The Mindy Project to Zadie Smith's Swing Time, from prisons to film sets to hospital wards and elder communities, untangling the assumptions about good and bad friends we live by. Weaving together history, interviews and memoir, Bad Friend offers what's long a more expansive, more rebellious vision of friendship fit for twenty-first-century life.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published April 24, 2025
36 people are currently reading
545 people want to read
About the author
Tiffany Watt Smith
6 books86 followersDr. Tiffany Watt Smith is a cultural historian and author of The Book of Human Emotions. In 2014, she was named a BBC New Generation Thinker, and her TED talk The History of Emotions has over 1.5 million views. She is currently a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. In her previous career, she was a theater director.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 13, 2025
3.5 stars.
My desire to go and live in a commune has been intensified.
My desire to go and live in a commune has been intensified.
May 17, 2025
In her groundbreaking new book Bad Friend, cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith delivers a deeply personal and intellectually rigorous examination of female friendship across the centuries. Drawing on historical archives, interviews, and her own experiences, Smith dismantles the glossy, Instagram-ready image of female friendship that has dominated our cultural conversation, revealing something far more complex, messy, and ultimately liberating beneath.
Unlike her previous works on human emotions (The Book of Human Emotions) and schadenfreude, Smith's latest offering feels more urgent and intimate. She has written what she describes as "an unusual sort of love letter to friendship," one that rejects the idealized narratives of "grand gestures" in favor of "puny failures... attempts rather than successes... tender openings rather than glossily packaged and indestructible images of perfection."
The Personal as Historical
What makes Bad Friend so compelling is Smith's willingness to interrogate her own friendships alongside her historical research. The book opens with a haunting account of a friendship that "burned very bright and then, like a dying star, exploded." This relationship with a woman she calls Sofia serves as a touchstone throughout the book, allowing Smith to explore the shame and confusion that accompany friendship breakdowns.
Smith writes with unflinching honesty about her own moments as a "bad friend" - from her intense infatuation with a flatmate named Liza that ended in betrayal when she slept with Liza's best friend, to her gradual ghosting of Sofia years later when their lives diverged in ways that made their once-close connection increasingly painful. These personal revelations never feel gratuitous; rather, they illuminate the paradoxes and complexities that define friendships between women.
A History of Control and Rebellion
Smith organizes her book into three chronological sections - "Entanglements" (1900-1940), "Separations" (1940-1980), and "Pacts" (1980-2020) - tracing the evolution of female friendship from the passionate schoolgirl "crushes" of the early twentieth century to contemporary elder co-housing communities.
Throughout, she reveals how women's friendships have been persistently policed and pathologized. In one of the book's most fascinating chapters, Smith examines how the intense romantic friendships between schoolgirls that were celebrated in the Victorian era became objects of suspicion in the 1910s and 20s, as psychological theories about "sexual inversion" gained traction. As Smith notes, "The more freedoms women won, the more urgent became the sense that their friendships needed containing and controlling."
Beyond the BFF Myth
Smith's most valuable contribution may be her deconstruction of the "perfect friend" ideal that has left so many women feeling inadequate. Through interviews with women living in co-housing communities, she discovers that even these supposedly evolved relationships involve "disappointments - the friendships that had once been close and then had suddenly cooled off without explanation... stories about jealousy and the shame it causes... stories that captured the myths we hold about each other, and the pleasure we take in destroying them."
Rather than viewing these difficulties as failures, Smith suggests they are inherent to friendship itself. As one ninety-two-year-old woman with a lifelong best friend tells her, the secret to lasting friendship is simply: "you just keep asking yourself 'what can I do for her?' And then you try to do it."
Strengths and Insights
Bad Friend excels in several key areas:
1. Historical depth: Smith uncovers fascinating histories of female friendship, from medieval Beguines living in religious communities to the chaotic friendships of 1970s New York artists like Nan Goldin and Cookie Mueller.
2. Cross-cultural perspective: Though primarily focused on Western examples, Smith incorporates perspectives from Japan, India, Central Africa, and beyond, showing how friendship norms vary dramatically across cultures.
3. Interdisciplinary approach: Drawing on psychology, sociology, history, and literary analysis, Smith creates a richly textured understanding of friendship's complexities.
4. Challenging dominant narratives: The book powerfully critiques how friendship has been commodified and flattened in contemporary culture, arguing for a more capacious, realistic vision.
Limitations and Missed Opportunities
Despite its many strengths, Bad Friend occasionally falls short:
- While Smith acknowledges the importance of cross-racial friendships and features Black feminist thinkers like Audre Lorde, the book could have more deeply explored how racism shapes friendship dynamics.
- The section on digital friendships feels somewhat underdeveloped compared to the nuanced historical analysis elsewhere.
- Smith sometimes presents her personal experiences as more universal than they perhaps are, particularly regarding class privilege and educational background.
- At times, the book's organization feels slightly disjointed as it moves between historical analysis, memoir, and interview material.
A New Paradigm for Friendship
What emerges from Bad Friend is a paradigm of friendship that rejects perfectionism in favor of effort and intention. Smith writes: "Friendship is not a permanent state one arrives at. It is something we do. It is a process of negotiating our endlessly changing selves, a process of uncertainty and of learning."
This vision is both challenging and liberating. It invites us to let go of the false idea that friendship should be effortless and unchanging, and instead embrace what Smith calls "a messier, more capacious, more flexible notion of what friendship can be, and where we find it."
Final Assessment: A Necessary Complication
In an era of simplified self-help and Instagram captions about "toxic people," Bad Friend offers something far more valuable: permission to be human within our friendships. Smith writes, "I am not trying to be a perfect friend. There really is no such thing. But sometimes I think I have become a better one as a result of this long process of detangling."
This "detangling" is what Smith offers readers - a chance to untie the knots of expectation, guilt, and idealization that have made friendship itself into something of a burden. By reclaiming the "bad friend" - the rebel, the intensely devoted, the one who sometimes fails despite best intentions - Smith creates space for a more authentic, sustainable practice of friendship.
Bad Friend is ultimately a hopeful book, suggesting that by accepting the limitations and complexities of friendship, we might paradoxically experience deeper, more enduring connections. As Smith concludes: "There will be times in a friendship where you struggle to make sense of how the other has changed. Or wonder if you have misjudged, and expected too much or given too little... Mostly you will keep wondering how you can help each other. And that is more than good enough."
For anyone who has ever felt inadequate as a friend or puzzled by the shifting dynamics of female relationships, this book offers not just solace but liberation - a chance to reimagine friendship beyond the impossible standards that have made it so difficult to practice and sustain.
Unlike her previous works on human emotions (The Book of Human Emotions) and schadenfreude, Smith's latest offering feels more urgent and intimate. She has written what she describes as "an unusual sort of love letter to friendship," one that rejects the idealized narratives of "grand gestures" in favor of "puny failures... attempts rather than successes... tender openings rather than glossily packaged and indestructible images of perfection."
The Personal as Historical
What makes Bad Friend so compelling is Smith's willingness to interrogate her own friendships alongside her historical research. The book opens with a haunting account of a friendship that "burned very bright and then, like a dying star, exploded." This relationship with a woman she calls Sofia serves as a touchstone throughout the book, allowing Smith to explore the shame and confusion that accompany friendship breakdowns.
Smith writes with unflinching honesty about her own moments as a "bad friend" - from her intense infatuation with a flatmate named Liza that ended in betrayal when she slept with Liza's best friend, to her gradual ghosting of Sofia years later when their lives diverged in ways that made their once-close connection increasingly painful. These personal revelations never feel gratuitous; rather, they illuminate the paradoxes and complexities that define friendships between women.
A History of Control and Rebellion
Smith organizes her book into three chronological sections - "Entanglements" (1900-1940), "Separations" (1940-1980), and "Pacts" (1980-2020) - tracing the evolution of female friendship from the passionate schoolgirl "crushes" of the early twentieth century to contemporary elder co-housing communities.
Throughout, she reveals how women's friendships have been persistently policed and pathologized. In one of the book's most fascinating chapters, Smith examines how the intense romantic friendships between schoolgirls that were celebrated in the Victorian era became objects of suspicion in the 1910s and 20s, as psychological theories about "sexual inversion" gained traction. As Smith notes, "The more freedoms women won, the more urgent became the sense that their friendships needed containing and controlling."
Beyond the BFF Myth
Smith's most valuable contribution may be her deconstruction of the "perfect friend" ideal that has left so many women feeling inadequate. Through interviews with women living in co-housing communities, she discovers that even these supposedly evolved relationships involve "disappointments - the friendships that had once been close and then had suddenly cooled off without explanation... stories about jealousy and the shame it causes... stories that captured the myths we hold about each other, and the pleasure we take in destroying them."
Rather than viewing these difficulties as failures, Smith suggests they are inherent to friendship itself. As one ninety-two-year-old woman with a lifelong best friend tells her, the secret to lasting friendship is simply: "you just keep asking yourself 'what can I do for her?' And then you try to do it."
Strengths and Insights
Bad Friend excels in several key areas:
1. Historical depth: Smith uncovers fascinating histories of female friendship, from medieval Beguines living in religious communities to the chaotic friendships of 1970s New York artists like Nan Goldin and Cookie Mueller.
2. Cross-cultural perspective: Though primarily focused on Western examples, Smith incorporates perspectives from Japan, India, Central Africa, and beyond, showing how friendship norms vary dramatically across cultures.
3. Interdisciplinary approach: Drawing on psychology, sociology, history, and literary analysis, Smith creates a richly textured understanding of friendship's complexities.
4. Challenging dominant narratives: The book powerfully critiques how friendship has been commodified and flattened in contemporary culture, arguing for a more capacious, realistic vision.
Limitations and Missed Opportunities
Despite its many strengths, Bad Friend occasionally falls short:
- While Smith acknowledges the importance of cross-racial friendships and features Black feminist thinkers like Audre Lorde, the book could have more deeply explored how racism shapes friendship dynamics.
- The section on digital friendships feels somewhat underdeveloped compared to the nuanced historical analysis elsewhere.
- Smith sometimes presents her personal experiences as more universal than they perhaps are, particularly regarding class privilege and educational background.
- At times, the book's organization feels slightly disjointed as it moves between historical analysis, memoir, and interview material.
A New Paradigm for Friendship
What emerges from Bad Friend is a paradigm of friendship that rejects perfectionism in favor of effort and intention. Smith writes: "Friendship is not a permanent state one arrives at. It is something we do. It is a process of negotiating our endlessly changing selves, a process of uncertainty and of learning."
This vision is both challenging and liberating. It invites us to let go of the false idea that friendship should be effortless and unchanging, and instead embrace what Smith calls "a messier, more capacious, more flexible notion of what friendship can be, and where we find it."
Final Assessment: A Necessary Complication
In an era of simplified self-help and Instagram captions about "toxic people," Bad Friend offers something far more valuable: permission to be human within our friendships. Smith writes, "I am not trying to be a perfect friend. There really is no such thing. But sometimes I think I have become a better one as a result of this long process of detangling."
This "detangling" is what Smith offers readers - a chance to untie the knots of expectation, guilt, and idealization that have made friendship itself into something of a burden. By reclaiming the "bad friend" - the rebel, the intensely devoted, the one who sometimes fails despite best intentions - Smith creates space for a more authentic, sustainable practice of friendship.
Bad Friend is ultimately a hopeful book, suggesting that by accepting the limitations and complexities of friendship, we might paradoxically experience deeper, more enduring connections. As Smith concludes: "There will be times in a friendship where you struggle to make sense of how the other has changed. Or wonder if you have misjudged, and expected too much or given too little... Mostly you will keep wondering how you can help each other. And that is more than good enough."
For anyone who has ever felt inadequate as a friend or puzzled by the shifting dynamics of female relationships, this book offers not just solace but liberation - a chance to reimagine friendship beyond the impossible standards that have made it so difficult to practice and sustain.
October 17, 2025
I’ve read so many books on female friendship, my favourite subject, from poetry collections, essays, novels and short stories. This history of women’s friendship is deep and thoughtful and personal and beautifully written. I learned and felt so much. Highly recommend!
December 17, 2025
It’s not bad, but it doesn’t deliver on the title at all
May 15, 2025
3⭐️
pros ✅
- moments throughout the book that were particularly pertinent for me: boarding school, importance of work friendships, falling in & out of friendships and not knowing why, feminism, etc. a lot hit home for me
- it is extremely comforting to know that friendships come and go and deteriorate for everyone and that it’s not just me
- extremely comprehensive
- good balance of research, primary sources and her own anecdotes and experiences
cons ❌
- i can’t ‘relax’ when reading non-fiction. like i can’t read this before bed because im trying to balance the fact that i want to absorb what im reading whilst also fighting to stay awake
- i wasn’t itching to go and read this on my breaks
- i don’t think ill have retained much of this in the long run, despite it being a pleasant enough read in the moment
pros ✅
- moments throughout the book that were particularly pertinent for me: boarding school, importance of work friendships, falling in & out of friendships and not knowing why, feminism, etc. a lot hit home for me
- it is extremely comforting to know that friendships come and go and deteriorate for everyone and that it’s not just me
- extremely comprehensive
- good balance of research, primary sources and her own anecdotes and experiences
cons ❌
- i can’t ‘relax’ when reading non-fiction. like i can’t read this before bed because im trying to balance the fact that i want to absorb what im reading whilst also fighting to stay awake
- i wasn’t itching to go and read this on my breaks
- i don’t think ill have retained much of this in the long run, despite it being a pleasant enough read in the moment
August 19, 2025
When faber sent me this book I was really excited to get to it because the premise was something that I had never really heard about before.
The concept of female friendships and complexities that lie within it is a topic that many people have not explored in great detail. The book is a blend of genres it touches on history of friendships, psychology of them and has personal anecdotes.
The structure does sometimes feel a bit jumpy and sometimes the personal anecdotes didn’t feel completly in felt a bit muddled. I often found myself wishing the personal experiences were elaborated on a bit more.
Overall, it is an interesting read that explores a topic a lot of women can relate to. I particularly enjoyed the authors commentary of difficult female friendships and how society sometimes makes us turn our back on each other to fulfil a patriarchal need.
The concept of female friendships and complexities that lie within it is a topic that many people have not explored in great detail. The book is a blend of genres it touches on history of friendships, psychology of them and has personal anecdotes.
The structure does sometimes feel a bit jumpy and sometimes the personal anecdotes didn’t feel completly in felt a bit muddled. I often found myself wishing the personal experiences were elaborated on a bit more.
Overall, it is an interesting read that explores a topic a lot of women can relate to. I particularly enjoyed the authors commentary of difficult female friendships and how society sometimes makes us turn our back on each other to fulfil a patriarchal need.
September 8, 2025
this is a beautifully written book. I love the exploration of friendships through history and the interwoven honesty of TWS's own experiences.
the honesty, the unpacking,
the shining a light on even the ugly parts of the self and saying "this too is me and that's ok" appealed to me
the honesty, the unpacking,
the shining a light on even the ugly parts of the self and saying "this too is me and that's ok" appealed to me
November 19, 2025
Lowkey this was super hard to get through and I found it a bit boring at times. I wanted more like the last chapter, like a critique on friendship in this day and age, but maybe I also had my expectations for the content mixed up.
June 13, 2025
Very dry writing, not sure if I'm just not in the mood or what, but I couldn't be bothered.
December 18, 2025
Un saggio molto banale e scritto in modo confusionario. Davvero una fatica arrivare in fondo.
December 26, 2025
Il tema era molto bello ma ho trovato la struttura del libro troppo caotica e un po' ripetitiva.
December 20, 2025
Allora... mi aspettavo qualcosa di più. Penso che l'autrice si sia concentrata maggiormente sulla sua esperienza che in una anche rappresentazione dell'amicizia nei media, infatti secondo me c'era molto di più che poteva essere rappresentato, benché abbia dato tanti e diversi spunti di riflessione e le sono grata per tanto, soprattutto per avere cercato di normalizzare l'essere 'una pessima amica'. Allo stesso tempo però penso che nella scrittura sia stata molto rindondante insistendo inutilmente e senza scorpo su diverse tematiche già affrontate e perciò non necessarie.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews