The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women Tell the True Stories Behind Their Blowups, Burnouts, and Slow Fades
Issue #24
Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell
By Margaret Wappler
Published: June 1st, 2005 | 2:38pm
I met Alison in the first grade and immediately admired everything about her: her pink Oxford shirts, the tiny gold studs in her lobes (I wasn’t allowed to get my ears pierced yet), the way she drew trees with veiny roots and glorious foliage, and her giant book of stickers — rainbows, horses, and scratch-and-sniff strawberries. Alison and I became best friends, but by third grade, it soured. Our relationship was the first of a few that went from vital to dried-up, and though there are perfectly valid explanations for why each of those friendships ran out of track — Alison suddenly seemed rigid, temperamental, and overly possessive of her fruit roll-ups, and I’m sure I annoyed her in my own way — I still flip them over in my mind, never sure what exactly drove us apart.
The Friend Who Got Away is one of those books I’ve been imagining for years but didn’t realize until it arrived in my mailbox one day. It’s the equivalent of sitting around at a dinner party with a bunch of smart, funny, wise women and having everyone reveal the story behind that one friendship (or several) that jumped the shark. The examinations are loaded with emotions — regret is tangible, but so is nostalgia for youth and a former self, not just an old friend. There are also bursts of anger and a keen hunger for the other, even when that other confounds and alienates you.
Emily White’s “Shelter” is a standout story about her spitfire friendship with a tweaker boy named Raymond, who eventually deserts her as his family had him. Heather Abel and Emily Chenoweth contribute separate views of their college friendship that went awry but remains a gold standard for both, and Diana Abu Jaber, in one of the few stories not set at an American college or New York City, recounts choosing between Bennett, a snobbish English lad with whom she shared a language, and Hisham, a Jordanian boy with whom she communicated only in the eternal childhood tongue of “running and babbling.” Though The Friend Who Got Away grows repetitive after a while, the stories are soothing, complicated, voyeuristic, and in the best cases, exhilarating, like the way I felt about going to Alison’s pool party in the second grade. Man, I still remember those awesome party favors.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Doubleday, 320 pages
List Price: $24.95
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