The Virago Book of Friendship

By: Rachel Cooke

Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis

A fond, fascinated look at women's friendship through the fiction, diaries, and letters of friends

'A highly entertaining, often instructive anthology bursting with every kind of amicable - or inimical - anecdote . . . Cooke has dug deep and uncovered nuggets of pure gold in every form of writing . . . a delicious book about the great power and strength of real friendship' TABLET

Friendship, a timeless subject, has never been more debated, something that has to do both with the internet - the perils of WhatsApp groups, the agony of ghosting - as well as with a growing awareness that loneliness is increasing in our society. Friendship has become a matter of urgent inquiry to therapists, scientists and sociologists. We understand its importance more and more, not only as a comfort and a privilege, but as vital to our health. But it's hard to get inside friendship: its particular intensity and its miraculous ease; its tendency to wax and wane; its ability to inspire both delight and despair.

This is the territory of novels and poems, diaries and letters, comics and graphic novels - and it is where the innovative and wide ranging Virago Book of Friendship steps in, bringing together work by more than 100 writers. From Jane Austen to Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf, from Dolly Alderton to Sarah Waters and Meg Wolitzer and, it celebrates and investigates friendship between women from first encounters to final goodbyes, from falling out to making up again.©2024 Rachel Cooke

Critic reviews

A highly entertaining, often instructive anthology bursting with every kind of amicable - or inimical - anecdote . . . Cooke has dug deep and uncovered nuggets of pure gold in every form of writing: letters, diaries, poems, novels - conventional and graphic - children's comics and even a newspaper agony aunt . . . this delicious book is about the great power and strength of real friendship, whether of besties at school, students sharing digs, suffragettes, WAAFs in freezing barracks, feminists, work colleagues or members of like-minded groups

A treasure chest (Ceci Browning)

An uplifting anthology (Claire Brayford)

A fascinating document

An exhilaratingly wide array (Sam Leith)

This is the perfect book to keep by your bedside . . . Are women's friendships more complex and intense than men's? Reading this, I think yes (Anne Sebba)

A delicious book (Hadley Freeman)