Friendship

December 22, 2014
Bev and Amy are best friends, but now, at age 30, life has not turned out as either had hoped. Bev’s engagement went sour when she found out her fiancé was cheating on her, and now she’s living in a tiny apartment with roommates, struggling to make ends meet as a temp. Amy was once an influential blogger, but she offended the wrong person and lost her job; now she works for a floundering website aimed at hip Jews called Yidster. They vent to each other and offer support, but when Bev becomes pregnant, their friendship is tested. Reader Rubinate narrates in an expressive voice, at turns snarky and heartfelt, and her quirky, Yiddish-accented voices for the Yidster owners are amusing. Her only flaw is that she sometimes sounds too similar when reading Amy and Bev, so it’s not always immediately obvious which is speaking—a drawback, since so much of the novel is conversations between the two of them. However, she is good at conveying the conflicting emotions of the characters, and the complex mixture of love and irritation that often comes with long-term friendship. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover.

March 10, 2014
Gould’s debut novel follows Bev and Amy as they transition into their 30s and a kind of stilted adulthood. The book opens with Bev on her way to an interview at a temp agency—she has dropped out of grad school before completing her M.F.A. and is stuck in the kind of low-rent existence typical of recent grads. As the novel progresses, Bev finds out she’s pregnant following a one-night stand; meanwhile Amy’s life, which has been insufferably charmed to this point, likewise starts to fall apart. The girls are forced to reevaluate their places in the world and their friendship. Gould’s novel is admirably, readably realistic—she knows these girls and the world they live in (including the omnipresence of technology and the way that it pervades relationships). In places, however, the accuracy of Gould’s prose takes away from the book’s ambition and reach. The plot is least successful when it strives for revelatory connections, as when Sally, a wealthy wife struggling to conceive, is slid conveniently into the narrative like a lucky puzzle piece. Still, Gould nails the complex blend of love, loyalty, and resentment that binds female friends. It is worth reading for the richness of its details (at one point, Amy is overwhelmed by the desire to put an engaged coworker’s wedding ring in her mouth), and it offers new insight into the experience of young women.