Friendaholic: THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BEST SELLER
£2.80
THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Bravely revealing’ BERNADINE EVARISTO
‘Funny, moving, helpful and true, Friendaholic deserves a massive audience’ SATHNAM SANGHERA
‘This book is brilliant’ JO ELVIN
‘Essential reading… admirably candid and well-crafted’ GUARDIAN
As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren’t they just as – if not more – important? So why is it hard to find the right words to express what these uniquely complex bonds mean to us? In Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to answer these questions.
Growing up, Elizabeth wanted to make everyone like her. Lacking friends at school, she grew up to believe that quantity equalled quality. Having lots of friends meant you were loved, popular and safe. She was determined to become a Good Friend. And, in many ways, she did. But in adulthood she slowly realised that it was often to the detriment of her own boundaries and mental health.
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 realisation: her truest friends were not always the ones she had been spending most time with. Why was this? Could she rebalance it? Was there such thing as…too many friends? And was she really the friend she thought she was?
Friendaholic unpacks the significance and evolution of friendship. From exploring her own personal friendships and the distinct importance of each of them in her life, to the unique and powerful insights of others across the globe, Elizabeth asks why there isn’t yet a language that can express its crucial influence on our world.
From ghosting and frenemies to social media and seismic life events, Elizabeth leaves no stone unturned. Friendaholic is the book you buy for the people you love but it’s also the book you read to become a better friend to yourself.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Fourth Estate (30 Mar. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 1305 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 402 pages |
by battleeditor
Is this the most cathartic book I’ve ever read? Based on the number of times I had to pause because of the tears streaming from my eyes, I think it must be.
I bought this knowing Elizabeth Day from her podcasts—How to Fail and Best Friend Therapy, co-hosted with her best friend Emma Reed Turrell—and thought this would be a bright, breezy, insightful, witty and uplifting book that would leave me with a smile on my face, but probably wouldn’t register very highly on the Richter scale of Important Works of Psychology.
Wow, was I wrong.
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. Dealing with narcissistic lovers or recalcitrant teenagers has been deemed proper subject matter for academic psychologists and therapists for decades; how to cope with the potential ending of a friendship has, by comparison, been seen as rather trivial, just one of those things in life that we are supposed to navigate without guidance.
Well, Day sets about redressing this imbalance with a vengeance, interspersing powerful and insightful chapters on various aspects of friendship—personified by her relationships with particular individuals—with short passages written by a variety of interesting, and often marginalised, people.
Over the course of the book, she examines topics such as the effect that the pandemic had on our friendships, why we make friends, friendships between people of very different ages, ghosting, platonic friendships between people of different genders, ‘friendship CVs’, the importance of clarity, frenemies, fertility (this chapter is a truly important piece of work in itself), the effect of big life changes and serious illness, friendship and social media, defining ‘best’ friendships and, perhaps the most unspoken subject, the grief at losing a friend.
That gives you some idea of the sheer breadth of subject matter Day covers in the book, but it cannot convey the astonishing depth and insight of her writing, the sheer beauty of her prose, the elegance with which she expresses her passion for the subject. Nor does it reveal her astonishing, self-effacing honesty about her own shortcomings, past and present, in dealing with her relationships. The title of the book is not, as it turns out, some clever publisher’s gimmick; rather, it’s a bald confession of Day’s own recovery from codependency, in which her own self-worth was defined by the opinions of others.
And this is why, for me, the book has been so cathartic, and has delivered repeated punch-in-the-guts moments. I’m quite sure that i’m not the only one who has felt the discomfort of self-recognition in its pages, and it’s Day’s skill at delivering those moments of necessary disquiet that make this book feel as though it were written personally for each one of us, like a secret, shared journal in whose pages all our social inadequacies and fears are laid out and then examined with love and compassion, all the pent-up poison extracted and a soothing salve applied.
Everyone should read this book. Seriously. I can’t think of a better guide to opening up the discussion of all those relationships that, after all, massively outnumber our romantic and, for most of us, family connections. If you’re young, you’ll learn a lot about plotting a steady path in your future friendships. If, like me, you’re older, it will help you to unravel much of the confusion, frustration and, yes, grief you may have been carrying on your shoulders for far too long.
In summary, you’ll end up wanting to be Elizabeth’s friend, but also being okay with the fact that that’s not going to happen. Rarely have I felt so much goodwill towards someone I’m unlikely to ever meet.
An extraordinary book. Buy it.
by Amazon Customer
I raced through this and got many of my friends to read it, so that should tell you it’s worth reading — but I’m not sure I liked it. Much of it I found painfully on the nose (such as how female friendships change in your 30s), and I found the parts on infertility genuinely powerful. However the overall impact of the book was that it made me briefly so neurotic about my friendships that I was convinced they had all gone on holiday without me. (They had invited me. I forgot.)
And as much as I found it compelling reading, there was something a bit disconcerting about reading about every insensitive or careless remark a friend had made to the author, probably not knowing what impact had it had, which (despite considering herself a people pleaser), she’d then held onto and made public years later .. in a book. It made me think that there’s another moral here: Don’t be friends with writers.
by NickiMags
I really enjoyed this and read it very quickly for a nonfiction book. I’d seen it around for a while, but wasn’t too sure if I wanted to read it or not. Would it be a bit depressing telling me I was a rubbish friend, or would it be an fascinating insight about how friendships work for other people?
Well I can tell you straight away that it wasn’t depressing at all.
Like most people I’ve had good and bad friendships. Over the years I’ve dropped friends, lost friends, made new friends, and held onto old friends. It can be quite a minefield at times especially as you get older, but also I know what I want from friendships these days, so I suppose it’s a bit easier in some ways.
Unlike the author I’m not a friendaholic. I’ve always had a small group of friends, and do better one to one, than being in a big group. I really don’t like mixing my friends with other people’s friends. Maybe it’s got something to do with growing up with four siblings and not wanting to share?
I enjoyed Elizabeth Day’s insight into friendships, and I loved the short chapters from different people she’s met along the way, sharing their take on what being a friend means to them.
Highly recommended if you enjoy nonfiction.
by Anonymous buyer
Loved this book. Funny in parts and such a great read. Would recommend you buy
by battleeditor
An insight into Elizabeth Day’s experience of friendship, Friendaholic should be on every woman’s to read list. It is an honest account of different types of friendships we encounter in our lives, from ghosting to best friends and everything in between. She shares her personal experiences while throwing in some scientific studies along the way.
I found Friendaholic very relatable and it made a lot of scene! As a woman in her late twenties, I don’t have a big friend group, but a couple of close friends with a few awful ones left in the past. Friendaholic has given me clarity as to why those friendships had to end, and why the ones I have now are so meaningful.
I could read Elizabeth’s writing all day, everyday and my literally needs would be satisfied. I have followed her a few years now and I just love her. She is a a great role model, and I’m sure friend as well.
by Amazon customer
This book was a wonderful read! Elizabeth approaches everything she does with such thoughtfulness – I love her podcast and other books – and this is no exception. 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. I’ve already bought this for several people and recommended to others and all are finding it an insightful read. Highly recommended!