BFF

by Sarah Gerard

"You haunt me in my everyday": A sharp, richly detailed autopsy of a troubled and complex friendship between the narrator and a girl who's slipped into another life.

Genres: Essays

24 pages, Chapbook

First published June 15, 2015

About the author

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State; the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize; and two chapbooks, most recently BFF. She teaches writing at Columbia University and for independent workshop series, including Catapult, Sackett Street, and Brooklyn Poets. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as in anthologies. She writes a monthly column for Hazlitt and is currently at work on several books, including a novel about love and a nonfiction book about a murder.

Reviews

[Margaret Adams]

I picked up this chapbook in the zine section of my favorite independent book store, Elliot Bay Books. This was a short (20-page) chapbook about an intense and fractured female friendship. I hated the ways in which it reinforced, yet again, this perpetual notion that female friendships are fraught with competition and betrayal. I loved the fact that it was able to convey deep love despite in spite of the toxicity, with well-chosen details. "You can love someone without trusting them, and I loved you completely."

Aside: is it me seeing them everywhere because I got interested in them, or are chapbooks and zines making a big comeback?

[Katie Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You're the only woman I've loved this way: enough to want to hurt you."

Sarah Gerard pulls no punches in this little chapbook. Set in the second person, she gives a deeply intimate look at one friendship in a way that feels utterly relatable. She gracefully reveals the layers of complications and no one comes out of this book perfect or blameless.

This is a story about truth, fiction, growing up, and growing apart. It's a chapbook I never wanted to end.

[Leslie]

"You can love someone without trusting someone, and I love you completely."