When Friendship Is the Real Love Story

Sometimes, long term friendships reach a moment of reckoning. I’m not talking about your work friends, or that roommate you swore to keep in touch with but never found the time. I’m talking about your chosen family. The people you thought would never leave you. When they do—or you do—something big shatters inside. Maybe this is because neither of you wants to hear what the other has to say—but don’t we count on our friends for absolute honesty more than our lovers? 

The intense intimacy of friendship is having a moment in contemporary fiction. But this is only the latest wave in a long literary tradition. Whether it’s the biological sisters of Jane Austen, the soul sisters of Toni Morrison’s Sula, or Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, a fraught, essential friendship completes the two main characters. When things aren’t right between them, or even worse, if one of them is gone for good, the other moves through life with a phantom limb. 

My novel, Talking to the Wolf, centers the profound effect of a friend breakup on four women, in tandem with the accidental death of one of the group. The women in my novel are completely undone by this unexpected loss. The pain of the breakup is compounded by the fact that there will never be a chance to make things right. Each of them—including the ghost—wrestles with the loyalty and turmoil of their shifting friendships as they make their way through a snowbound New York City to their 35^th high school reunion. The primacy of their feelings toward each other affects every aspect of their lives across careers, thwarted ambitions, and romantic relationships.

The “marriage plot” has taken a very long time to die. There’s a powerful cultural mythology around that elusive partner who is both your best friend and your lover—even when those roles are often incompatible. But a friend divorce can feel more painful than the end of a bad marriage. After all, your friends were there to help you tape together your reckless, impossible heart. 

The following books know this well. They span decades and styles, coming-of-age, death, ambition, success and failure. All of them explore the complicated, private heartbreak of losing a friend. 

Ponti by Sharlene Teo 

This novel is haunted by a glamorous mother who became a B-movie horror film star. What a great premise! The story is told from three points of view: the mother, her insecure, adolescent daughter, Szu—a social outcast at her school in Singapore—and Circe, the classmate who appears to be a fellow outcast despite her wealth and beauty. Szu’s distant, cruel mother and her Auntie now scrape by as mediums (though their psychic gifts are questionable, according to Szu). Circe becomes Szu’s “best friend” for better and worse. The novel has a gothic horror sensibility that echoes the campy film that made Szu’s mother famous, but the teenage friendship, with its complex cocktail of loyalty and betrayal, is utterly real. 

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Emmerich

Yoshimoto has an eye and ear for language that holds us with exquisite simplicity—like a ballet dancer, her words land without a sound. The story follows the close bond between two cousins/best friends in a small coastal Japanese town, while death lingers just offstage. Tsugumi has had a mysterious illness since childhood, but her frail body burns with rebellion. Using rude honesty as her weapon, she shocks and charms her family, especially her cousin, who tells the story of this last summer in their late teens; they both know something is about to change forever. 

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

The Grammarians is a word lovers’ book. In it, a pair of identical twin sisters not only have their own language—they share an obsession with language itself. Precocious American children of the late 20th century, the dictionary is their favorite toy. The novel explores the tensions, envy, and loyalties that hold these two together, just as it splits them apart. The semiotics of words shape both of their lives, becoming the lens through which they see the world and each other. A tale of two sisters. 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This novel gripped me from the start. When three friends develop a highly successful video game in college, a love triangle plays out. Yes, two of them fall in love, but their story is more about the intensity of friendship than romantic love. The cyber world serves as a mirror to the real-life bonds that are changed forever by the price of success and adulthood. I’m not a gamer, but I was utterly compelled by this novel, which is really about the games played between friends and lovers. 

Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett

In this memoir, Ann Patchett tells the story of her highly literary friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, who died in 2002. The reader follows Patchett and Grealy from their graduate school days through their later careers as successful writers. They were opposites in many ways—Lucy was a luminescent poet, the life of the party, and a fragile survivor of childhood cancer, while Ann describes herself as more of a workhorse writer, the stalwart best friend who saw Lucy through her struggles with addiction and repeated surgeries. Patchett both adores and is exhausted by her crucial, talented, difficult friend. At the heart of this book is the urgency and ambition of two young artists. Who is Truth and who is Beauty? You can make up your own mind about that. 

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy 

In this novel, “the wilderness” refers to the wilds of adulthood. How do you get there and what does it mean for your friendships along the way? This coming-of-age in your 20s story follows a group of four young Black women split between New York and Los Angeles, whose cities and backgrounds define their friendships and selves. Spanning two decades, from 2000 to 2020, Flournoy effortlessly time jumps between years and narrators as their conflicts, personal histories, and deep loyalties reveal what they really think about each other. Even as they struggle with expectations and societal judgements, they refuse—or are unable to—leave each other behind. 

Sula by Toni Morrison

Sula may be the “mother” of all contemporary female friendship novels. Even if you haven’t read this since high school, Sula remains a literary cornerstone, speaking to the different parts of us that emerge at various stages of life. There are many entry points—political, sexual, racial, social—but the center of gravity is the friendship between rebellious, bohemian Sula, and her childhood best friend, the more conventional Nel. Sula is both the ultimate outsider and insider of their multigenerational community in Ohio. Although she and Nel swear to share everything as children, Sula never bows to conventional social mores. Secrets and betrayals emerge when Sula returns to town as an adult. But Nel, and the town itself, are not complete without Sula’s agonizing and disruptive life force.