Friendship

Big Friendship

Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman · 2020

Two close friends and longtime podcast co-hosts write candidly about a serious rupture in their own friendship and the deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable work it took to repair it — treating the whole experience with the same seriousness most books reserve for romantic relationships. Their central argument is genuinely useful: that the closest friendships require real maintenance, real difficult conversations, and real effort to sustain through life’s inevitable changes. For those who have let an important friendship drift through simple neglect, Sow and Friedman make a compelling case for treating it with more intention.

Frientimacy

Shasta Nelson · 2016

Nelson identifies three specific qualities that determine whether a friendship deepens or stays surface-level — consistency, vulnerability, and positivity — and offers genuinely practical guidance on building each one deliberately rather than hoping closeness simply happens on its own. Her book is particularly useful for adults who sense their friendships have become thinner since the easy proximity of school or university life ended. For those wondering why their adult friendships feel harder to deepen than the ones from earlier in life, Nelson offers both an explanation and a concrete way forward.

Friendfluence

Carlin Flora · 2013

Flora, drawing on psychological research, makes the case that friends shape who we become at least as profoundly as family does, influencing everything from our habits and health to our sense of identity, often far more than we recognise in the moment. The book is as much a celebration of friendship’s power as a serious examination of it, encouraging readers to consider how deliberately they have chosen the people exerting this much quiet influence on their lives. For those curious about why certain friendships have changed them so deeply, Flora offers genuinely fascinating context.

Anne of Green Gables

L.M. Montgomery · 1908

Anne Shirley’s friendship with Diana Barry, her self-declared “bosom friend,” remains one of literature’s most joyful portraits of childhood friendship — intense, dramatic, utterly devoted, and entirely without the complications adult friendships often accumulate. Montgomery captures something true about the particular, all-consuming wonder of finding a true kindred spirit, a feeling many adults remember far more clearly than they currently experience it. For those missing that early, uncomplicated intensity of friendship, Anne and Diana offer a warm, familiar reminder of what it once felt like.

Charlotte’s Web

E.B. White · 1952

A spider saving a pig’s life through nothing more than quiet, patient devotion remains one of the most moving portraits of friendship in any form, for readers of any age. White never oversells it — Charlotte simply does what a good friend does, consistently, until it matters most.

Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty · 2014

Three very different mothers become genuinely, fiercely loyal to one another over the course of a single school year, in a novel that takes female friendship as seriously as it takes its central mystery. Moriarty is particularly good on how friendship can form in unglamorous, unexpected circumstances and still turn out to be the realest thing in the book.