Eight Books About the Ups and Downs of Friendship

Almost everyone has at least one friendship breakup they still think about. I know I do, and maybe you do too. When I realized there weren’t many books out there that looked closely at friendship—in all its highs and lows—I wrote Bad Asians, which follows a group of four best friends from childhood and looks at how the pressures of their hyper-competitive Chinese American community, the Great Recession of 2008, and their own diverging paths leads to a massive rupture in their friend group, one that affects them for years after.

In the process, I found other books that treated friendship with the drama and heartbreak of a true romance. Books that asked what friendships offer that no other relationship can, why it hurts so much when they end, and even how we might find our way back together again. And while these books, and mine, might not fully answer these questions, I hope they make you feel less alone in asking them.

Grant Ginder, So Old, So Young

Ginder is a master of writing characters in hilariously awkward social situations, and he’s done it again with So Old, So Young. We follow a tight-knit group of friends from college to middle age, moving from a New Year’s Eve party in 2008 to a wedding in 2014 to a birthday party in 2018, a Halloween party in 2022, and a funeral in 2024. The gift and burden of their shared history is really its own character here. If you ever wondered how millennials age gracefully, this book will tell you that there’s no such thing.

Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty

This book destroyed me when I read it in my early 20s, and is proving equally lethal now in my mid-30s. Patchett chronicles her intense friendship with writer Lucy Grealy, from their young artist days in Iowa City to their increasingly caretaker/patient dynamic as Grealy struggles with addiction and medical trauma. This line alone should tell you everything you need to know: “Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn’t realized was gone.”

Elizabeth Ames, The Other’s Gold

Complicated characters? A story structured around their worst mistakes? A book spanning college to motherhood? Sign me up! Ames’ character study of four young women—Lainey, Ji Sun, Margaret, and Alice—is a brave and ambitious exploration of how flawed people can find the grace they need in their friends.

Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

This book defies categorization. When five young campers—Nita, Andee, Isabel, Dina, and Siobhan—are stranded after a shocking accident, they must find their way back to safety by any means necessary. Years later, now technically out of harm’s way, each of them still grapples with their shared trauma. What should have been a season of friendship is now a different kind of forever bond. How many of us have confronted who we truly are when our survival is at stake? How many of us could continue with normal life as if nothing was lost, or gained?

Mary McCarthy, The Group

A foundational text for Bad Asians! I always have an extra copy of McCarthy’s acerbic, clear-eyed portrait of a group of eight recent Vassar graduates in the 1930’s—just in case I run into someone who hasn’t read it. Each of these characters is perfectly positioned for the life of privilege their parents promised, and yet eager for something different. Over the years, we see these educated young women reduced by society’s constraints on marriage, motherhood, career, and sexuality, and yet their questions, reflections, and strivings for something different strike a hopeful note that change can be incremental, generational, and still permanent.

Courtney Sullivan, Commencement

I can still remember ripping through this book when I first got it, straight out of college myself. Like The Group, Commencement follows a group of friends who graduate from a Seven Sisters school (in this case, Smith) and embark on paths cleared for them by the feminists before them. Sullivan has such a talent for writing characters you love, and whose love for each other is utterly believable (and aspirational). You’ll root for Celia, Bree, Sally, and April as they test their friendships, families, and personal values, and come out stronger together.

Amy Goldman Ross, The Girls

I got this book at the Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school and it has haunted me since. A tale of social games and friend group-turned-clique, The Girls is at its core a simple, age-old nightmare: a group of middle school girls decides to ostracize one of their own for no apparent reason. Yet the alternating perspectives gives everyone a voice in this drama including Candace, the “queen bee,” whose story is especially humanizing even as your heart aches for her “victims.”

Jean Chen Ho, Fiona and Jane

What can I say, I’m a sucker for books about female friendship, especially ones, like Ho’s, that get at both the transcendent, soul-shaping quality of them, as well as the mundane detritus—the texts, the inside jokes, the thoughts about their awful exes. Like this hard jewel of a back-and-forth between the two eponymous characters:

“You hate babies,” Fiona said.

“I won’t hate yours.”

The shared history, the deep knowing, the ability to share your fears and joke about it in the same breath—this collection of linked stories is chock full of insights about how friendships grow, and sometimes shrink, over the years. But no matter how you or your best friend might change, when you’re looking for your home in the world, you know where to find it.

__________________________________