Friendship: A Novel Hardcover – July 1, 2014

“Friendship is superficially about youngish, self-involved writerly types, but it’s really about people who are trying to be good and finding it hard. This is a book about ethics—about the real, unglamorous daily battle that is not being a jerk. Friendship has that same magical universality-in-specificity that make us care about the local politics of Middlemarch or Clarissa Dalloway’s floral arrangements. In tiny brushstrokes, Gould captures the small weirdnesses of being alive, of sitting in an interview and being suddenly and unaccountably struck with a desire to bite through the rim of a teacup . . . The best part of the novel is Bev and Amy: their fights and pettinesses, sure, but mostly their love . . . Praising Gould for writing a genuine-seeming female friendship is almost insulting, like praising her for knowing how to use page numbers. But in a literary landscape where no one seems to be able to count, Gould has created the kind of friendship that is not shallow, silly or a plot sideline, but private, deep and more real than almost anything else. It’s enough to make your <3 sing.” —Annalisa Quinn, NPR

“A scintillating debut novel . . . No threat of veils here: just the biting, brilliant exploration of a modern female friendship.” —Megan Labrise, Kirkus Reviews

“Very funny . . . Gould is an expert at capturing some of those thoughts you don’t want to admit that you have . . . Friendship is full of moments you will recognize, sometimes joyfully and sometimes a little bit shamefully. It focuses entirely on Bev and Amy’s relationship; this is not a story about trying to meet a man; the men are present but are never the goal or the aspiration (Friendship passes the Bechdel test with flying colors). Gould’s narrative is unforgiving in an immensely refreshing way: an honest, witty, and sharply observed exploration of the confusion and the comfort of adult female friendship.” —Amanda Bullock, Everyday ebook

“Emily Gould’s new novel, Friendship, offers a vivid exploration of the missed connections and overwhelming isolation of modern urban life . . . Gould's willfully sparse prose often focuses on minutiae . . . Her novel is notably devoid of the melancholy images and flourishes more common to young fiction writers with literary aspirations. But this flat, unapologetically honest tone and fixation on the mundane are arguably what make Gould’s story unique and compulsively readable. Instead of serving up one weighty, overwrought scene after another, Gould constructs her world from exactly the same empty building blocks that make up plenty of lives today: ‘Wikipedia rabbit holes’ substitute for actual work; Twitter supplements real, face-to-face friendships; emoticons take the place of honest, direct expressions of feeling . . . Gould clearly has a knack for letting the absurdities of modern life speak for themselves . . . Friendship so knowingly and skillfully reveals the ways that a spoiled existence—spending recklessly while enduring leisurely but soul-sucking new media jobs and unnervingly detached relationships—add up to a particular form of hell. Gould details exactly how an overactive mind, with nowhere to land, runs wild in a rarefied vacuum.”  —Heather Havrilesky, The Los Angeles Times

“Friendship [is] a difficult and at times unpleasant look at the intense bonds women form during this tenuous period of life . . . Is a woman talking about herself, or, as is the case in Friendship, to each other, inherently dangerous? . . . Gould is, in her small way, reinventing the way things are done and what stories are told, and for some reason this reads as either hazardous or dismissible for those comfortable with the status quo . . . [Friendship] is a slim novel about the close relationship between publishing house coworkers turned "life partners," Bev Tunney and Amy Schein, two women struggling through the trials of an unforgiving New York publishing scene . . . Their relationship is penned with the same care and attention writers usually reserve for romantic love, the two bonded together with as much codependence as compassion. Friendship is rife with the anxieties that exist on the precipice of female adulthood, with the pair popping klonopins, downing cocktails and vomiting in public, wondering where the careers and the men that they were promised are as they navigate the myriad messes they’ve found themselves in . . . The narrative focus is entirely on these two flawed women and the shifting dynamic between them—men becoming mere accessories to their dramas and desires, often proving themselves selfishly incapable of handling life’s responsibilities and promptly fading out of view. Building realistic and robust female characters of this age bracket is a rarity, and in reading Friendship one is struck by how . . . innovative this simple story is. And despite how insufferable these women can be . . . you grow to be glad they’ve been put to the page, if only because it feels like they’ve never been allowed to be there before.” —Stacey May Fowles, The National Post (Canada)

“There is a degree to which Friendship is, on Gould’s part, a revolutionary act, a reclaiming of the right to write something impervious to inflammatory vitriol . . . There is genuine tenderness and complication between Bev and Amy, and the novel’s best moments occur when the pair are allowed to just sit and chat about their imperfect starter lives. ‘Think of a child in my apartment that I share with my disgusting roommates!’ Bev says, pondering her options, post-pregnancy-test. ‘It’s all one big exposed, chewable wire. My baby would grow up eating roaches straight off the floor.’ Amy’s encouraging response: ‘Well, I’m sure plenty of babies do.’ . . . For much of the novel, you wish Amy would just get back to writing already — set aside the petty trappings of her aimless online life and participate in the actual world. (Go analog, honey, one thinks. Hell, go outside.) Then you realize you’re holding Emily Gould’s novel in your hands—a tangible object, real live printed matter—and things suddenly seem as if they’re looking up.” —Katie Arnold-Ratliff, The New York Times Book Review

“As Gould exposes [Amy and Bev’s] messiness—their fights, mortifying Gchat convos, acts of self-sabotage — she almost dares you to judge them. But the specificity of their struggles (peanut butter soup for dinner, anyone?) and Gould’s hyperaware voice lend the story of their friendship poignance and shades of relatability. A-” —Stephan Lee, Entertainment Weekly

“Because it deals with themes of female friendship and romantic hardship, Friendship will likely make a few girl-mag "beach read" lists—not entirely unfairly, as it’s a breezy, light thing. But it’s also a funny, uncomfortable book that lays bare all the anxieties of being a sort-of young woman trying to make it work in today’s world—a search for meaning that is, of course, very adult.” —Jennifer Croll, Straight.com

“[An] engaging debut novel . . . Three elements . . . power it . . . The first is that the plot, after chirping along somewhat predictably for two-hundred-odd pages, suddenly veers off in a direction that struck me as genuinely harrowing and unpredictable. The second is the obvious but somehow still essential fact that this book is proudly and unapologetically about two women who do not end up competing for or otherwise sacrificing their integrity in the pursuit of men. This may seem unremarkable, but such depictions are, somewhat inexplicably, quite rare: A casual and profoundly unscientific survey suggests that the number of books that pass the famous Bechdel test is dismally low. In a perfect world, a book that offers a warm and emotionally honest depiction of a friendship between young women should not need to be cause for celebration. In ours, it is. The third element of Friendship that I found deeply admirable, even heroic, is the subtle but unmistakable current of bracing feminist anger that thrums just under its otherwise breezy surface. It’s nothing so crude as that the men in the novel are creeps, although several are. It’s that Bev and Amy exist in a world where double standards and cultural and structural biases still reign, a realization which salts the narrative in subtle and unmistakable ways. If such a concept is somehow distasteful to you, then go read a book about the Civil War or something. There will always be plenty of those, even in Brooklyn.” —Michael Lindgren, The L Magazine

“More than an exploration of friendship, this novel is about what happens when the things we take for granted slip away and we are forced to come up with new ways of being . . . Gould does a fine job capturing the women’s frustrations, big and small, and the ways in which their friendship serves both as a hindrance and a means to maturing.” —Shoshana Olidort, The Chicago Tribune

“Friendship, a slim, sometimes piercing novel, is a sharply observed chronicle of the inequality inherent in even the most valued friendships.” —Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post

“Friendship, above all, is about the hardships of adulthood. ‘Adulthood,’ a very tossed-around phrase these days, encompasses and illuminates relationships, sex, careers, being able to pay our credit card bills on time, saying no, saying yes, going with our inexperienced guts, and understanding when we’ve won and when we’ve lost. I appreciated Friendship, because it made me feel less alone. I’m almost nothing like Amy OR Bev, but I still found comfort in their fumbling odysseys. And I think you will too.” —Gina Vaynshteyn, Hello Giggles

“Set in hipster Brookly, former Gawker editor Gould’s latest centers on Bev and Amy, 30-year-olds struggling to be grown-ups in a world where moving back home while working for peanuts is often the only course. It’s a wry, sharply observed coming-of-age story for the postrecession era.” —People

“There’s a difference between mere adulthood, which is legally defined, and being a grown-up, which is fuzzy and subjective. For the characters in Gould’s funny and affecting debut novel, this difference is sharply felt . . . The novel’s depiction of the dynamics of friendship—how there’s often affection and admiration mixed with envy and competition—feels authentic. Gould’s prose reads like the voice of the charmingly blunt friend you wish you had; her observations are hilarious and insightful. The portrayal of office ennui is depressingly accurate: Amy spends her time reading Wikipedia and checking Twitter, while Bev, collating papers, has a ‘flash of wanting to smash something made of flesh, her own hand or someone else’s.’ There’s a long tradition of novels about bright young women hoping to conquer New York. Many of these books culminate in glamorous self-actualization, but Friendship refuses this path. These characters must will themselves past disappointment and realistic problems—precarious finances, especially—and they don’t end up where you’d expect. What they choose—it’s the act of choosing that means everything—is as surprising as it is satisfying.” —Naoko Asano, Maclean’s

“[Friendship is a] very fine first novel . . . Most of us know honesty as a virtue, and fewer know it as a sneaky concept in the craft of fiction. The latter honesty is about eschewing cliché, mastering particular skills for making the reader feel confided in. The novel, or publishing itself, might be in jeopardy, but writing will live as long as there remains the distinct pleasure of being told an honest thing. It’s a little frightening, though; once transmuted into a literary principle, honesty becomes a talent of which almost none of us is truly capable . . . I submit that something like the following is unlikely and true: Emily Gould is one of the honest ones.” —M. C. Mah, The Rumpus

“Gould’s sparkling . . . debut　. . . is both a love letter and a breakup letter to New York City, and an invocation of the feeling of living there in your 20s. As the characters reach 30, the air of endless possibility starts to be replaced with the uneasy feeling that, to misquote Frank Sinatra, if you can’t make it there, you can’t make it anywhere . . . Gould perfectly captures the entitled aimlessness of your 20s, that feeling that you need to buy yourself an expensive latte to cheer yourself up because you might not be able to afford rent that month.” —Rob Thomas, The Cap Times

“Gould’s strengths as a writer lie in her ability to portray contemporary women. Both main characters, who moved to Manhattan—well, Brooklyn—in order to conquer it often end up defeated . . . Though Gould’s book is called Friendship it’s about much more than, as the main characters might say, BFFs. It’s about transitioning from idealistic youth to realistic adulthood, sacrificing freedom for stability, and abandoning creative lifestyles in order to craft sustainable lives . . . Amy and Bev can be impulsive and oblivious. However, they’re recognizable to anyone who was ever told, as a child, that she could grow up to be anyone she wanted to be—and later struggled to figure out who that was . . . Though Friendship is a modern tale astutely told, it offers the class-consciousness reminiscent of a Victorian novel . . . Gould is a master of the telling detail or the ironic turn of phrase . . . With "Friendship," Gould establishes herself as a distinctively contemporary literary voice. Her dialogue resounds, and her dark humor gives texture to the prose. And though Friendship focuses on young women, readers need be neither young nor female in order to enjoy it . . . This is a very human story for any of us who have ever been jealous of a friend or wished our friends were more jealous of us.” —Grace Bello, Christian Science Monitor

“Gould is a gifted documentarian. The novel is filled with keenly observed details, especially about the outsize role that technology plays in her characters’ lives. ‘Are those Google predictions real?’ Amy asks at one point. ‘Do they work? They do, don’t they. Okay, cool, another thing I have to start paying attention to so that my life can be fully efficient and optimized.’ And Gould can draw a scathing character description: ‘Shoshana’s beauty disappeared the minute she opened her mouth; all that glowing skin and shimmering hair couldn’t compensate for the kind of voice you immediately associate with someone calling from the temple sisterhood to remind you it’s your turn to plate the oneg after Shabbat service.’” —Nora Krug, The Washington Post

“Two young women try to create the glamorous lives they’ve imagined for themselves while talking on Gchat from their desks at their less-than-ideal jobs. Bev left her cool-sounding but dispiriting entry-level position at a Manhattan publishing house to follow her boyfriend to the Midwest. Bad move. Now she’s back in New York, single again, and temping. Amy was once famous for her work at a hot website-or maybe she was just notorious: ‘[N]ow that she was neither, it mattered less which one it had been.’ She’s been working for three years at Yidster, ‘the third-most-popular online destination for cultural coverage with a modern Jewish angle,’ but is basically just floating through life on a diet of clicks and tweets, hoping her boyfriend will move in with her so she'll be able to keep paying the rent on her lovely brownstone apartment in Brooklyn. When Bev gets pregnant on a hilariously dreadful first date, the women are forced to confront their differing dreams and priorities. Plot takes a back seat to Gould’s razor-sharp humor and observations about life in New York among a class of young people who know more about how they’d like to live than how to pay for it. It’s also a delight to read a novel that places female friendship at its center; we watch Bev and Amy manage their fluctuating feelings of love, jealousy and sometimes disdain for each other. ‘It seems improbable that this hasn’t happened to us before,’ Amy says when she learns that Bev is pregnant. ‘Us?’ Bev replies. ‘Are you going to start saying ‘we’re pregnant’? . . . We’re not a couple, Amy.’ They’re not, but they are, and Gould brilliantly charts their ups and downs.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“There is a sentimental delight in reading Friendship and its roller coaster ride of urban highs and lows . . . In the end, Gould draws a vivid and convincing portrait of a friendship—​in all of its human misunderstandings, disappointments, and brokenness . . . It is no small feat to animate and chart the emotional fluctuations and subtle contours of female friendships on the page . . . [Gould] illuminate[s] what it means to grow up together and then sometimes apart.” —S. Kirk Walsh, The Virginia Quarterly Review

“Work—sustained creativity, the problems of receiving too much attention, too fast and too young, paycheques, temp gigs, what it all might add up to and protect from—is as much a theme of the book as friendship is. The novel has a disarmingly for-real sense of these kinds of women’s lives, and features high-def, immersive verisimilitude about roommates, instant messages, storage units, job applications, buses, shirts, drinks and, largely, money; these are, of course, also the quotidian but hugely meaningful circumstances that create, maintain and end friendships, especially between women, especially in cities . . . Adult female friendships act as load-bearing walls, but they’re also precarious: jealousy and judgments can rip them open in a day; errors in the careful balance sheet of neediness and interest in the other one’s day undo years of emotional work. ‘Sharply observed’ is a gross cliché, but Friendship is Gould seeing and understanding the small and mounting details of what women like her want, what they have to do to get it, and what they do to ruin everything. Gould’s first, best talent . . . is to see things as they are, like a craftsperson, like a writer of novels has to see them.” —Kate Carraway, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“A savvy first novel that, in piercing prose, zeroes in on modern ennui and the catalysts that force even the most apathetic out of their complacency.”  —Booklist

“A sharp, sad, unforgiving (in a great way) and remarkably funny exploration of thirty-something female friendship.” —Nerve