Bad Friend: How Modern Women Revolutionized Friendship

Cultural historian Smith (The Book of Human Emotion) explores fraught relationships between women in this insightful blend of memoir and history. Examining female friendship dynamics from 1900 to 2020, Smith breaks the shifts down decade by decade, tossing in reflections about her own relationships along the way. In 1913, for instance, Smith College cautioned students about “girl crushes”; by 1933, they were being warned about friendship love triangles. Friendships in the 1940s and ’50s, Smith argues, were defined by neighborhood proximity and shared conformity, while the ’60s introduced issues of social justice and feminism into the mix. Expanded professional and social opportunities for women created more chances for their individual paths to diverge in the ’70s and ’80s. “Picking apart these narratives, with all their unrealistic expectations, their legislations and their powerful capacity to create shame, is the only way I know to let them go,” Smith writes, fortifying her research and reporting with raw accounts of friendship breakups and stumbles in her own life (“Did I lack the courage or commitment friendship took?” she wonders after a particularly bruising end to a friendship). It adds up to a moving and incisive analysis of an oft-discussed subject. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta, Pagnamenta Agency. (May)