Friendaholic: THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BEST SELLER

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I really want to say that reading Elizabeth Day feels like listening to a friend, but it's complicated by the fact that I’m an actual friend who makes an appearance in this book on friendship. This book definitely made me think a lot about the people in my life - the past and current friends that I’ve had and the roles they’ve played.

We don't have to have "White Wine Wednesdays" to discuss how we feel about each other because playing and training alongside each other and pushing ourselves beyond physical barriers to grow as teammates and not let each other down says more than any fireside discussion possibly could. Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of thousands of people forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them - with the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not the ones she had been spending most time with. Which gets at the other big limitation of the book for me, the outright dismissal of male-to-male friendships.Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of many who were forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them – with the crisis came a dawning her truest friends were not always the ones she had been spending most time with. Being good at friendship, which is not quite the same as being a good friend, is a core self-belief that many of us (often women) cling to as evidence that we are, in some important way, both lovable and likable.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Day rightly points out that friendship as a subject has, for far too long, been treated as a Cinderella subject compared to romantic and even family relationships.This made me very reflective and there were some really strong chapters (the one on fertility/managing female friendships around parenthood in particular). Op sommige delen interessant maar het bleek gewoon echt meer een boek te zijn over haar vriendschappen in plaats van vriendschappen in het algemeen, ik mis toch gewoon de wetenschap een beetje (ook al probeert ze die erbij te halen maar vaak veel te kort).

I started off really not liking it and almost put it down, I just thought it came from a really privileged perspective and that wasn’t acknowledged enough - like addiction is a huge illness and saying your addicted to friendship is taking the piss a bit! Her memoir, How To Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong is a Sunday Times top 5 bestseller and has been described as ‘life-changing’ by critics. That is not to say an exploration of friendship should only be done from the scientific perspective, there's no doubt that we experience friendship as a feeling and thus it's both subjective and completely personal.

A journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author, Elizabeth Day’s works include the novels Paper, Scissors, Home Fires, Paradise City and The Party. It is an honest account of different types of friendships we encounter in our lives, from ghosting to best friends and everything in between. That I prefer cinema dates to ones in bars and that I don’t do hugs (it’s nothing personal, I just don’t). I wonder if we should maybe look around for someone who likes the quintessential western male-to-male bonding experience before we just openly dismiss male friendship as a fiction.

What I loved about this as a recovering Friendaholic myself is Elizabeth’s vulnerability and openness as she looks at why some of her deepest friendships didn’t work out, as well as why he best friendship with Emma has (and thank goodness- she seems amazing).I was really excited to read this as I thought it would help me be a better friend and strengthen friendships. In general I'm ok with saying you have more than one best friend but Day has made it quite clear she only has one and that she's super special. The data is interesting if interpreted the right way but it's not useful if you just throw it out there without examining it properly. I learnt so much about myself reading this and was particularly moved reading Elizabeth’s heartbreaking account of her fertility journey - I felt seen and heard.