Friends and Strangers: A novel
An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the bestselling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions.
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her influencer sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
395 pages
What’s it about?
Elizabeth is an accomplished author and journalist when she and her husband Andrew decide to move with their new baby out of Brooklyn and back to Andrew's small-town. As Elizabeth makes the transition away from New York she begins to rely on her college-age babysitter Sam more and more. Sam is about to finish college and is struggling with her own choices as she and Elizabeth bond over wine and the baby.
What did it make me think about?
Privilege. Perspective.
Should I read it?
So I loved Saints For All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan and was really excited to get this book from the library. I liked aspects of this book, but too often I felt detached from these characters. Elizabeth was hard to like, and yet I didn't dislike her... I think that lack of feeling for the characters just left me a little ambivalent about the story. I do think the book raises a lot of interesting issues and would make for a good discussion. I will still be looking forward to the next book J. Courtney Sullivan writes.
Quote-
"The bond between parent and child was all-consuming, and yet its power was not cumulative. It had to be remade again and again throughout the course of a lifetime. A mother could do everything right early on, and still, if she failed to renegotiate the terms, all would be lost."
If you liked this try-
Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Saints for All Ocassions by J. Courtney Sullivan
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.