Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

Product Information

Meet Elizabeth Day, recovering “friendaholic”. While she was no queen bee at school, Day became an indiscriminate collector of pals in adulthood, reaching her 40s before questioning the urge. This unabashedly personal book charts her attempts to “course-correct” by analysing the meaning of friendship. She’s helped by five of her closest confidants, including journalist Sathnam Sanghera and broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill, with first-person takes from the likes of a neurodivergent Iraqi woman and the sixtysomething chairman of a Norfolk “men’s shed”. It’s a generous, companionable guide to a part of life every bit as crucial – and as fraught – as romance or family. The Women Who Saved the English Countryside A generous, companionable guide to a part of life every bit as crucial - and as fraught - as romance or family.’THE OBSERVER -

As I read Elizabeth Day’s latest work of non-fiction, Friendaholic, I found myself texting friends, making plans. We’ll call it guilt. If Day was addicted to friendships, I was ambivalent. I had good friends but had never thought deeply about this social institution we were enacting. Had I been doing it wrong?I found the topic interesting but I was not a fan of the writer. I couldn't relate to her upper middle class select group of well connected "bright young things" type friends. I was in hospital over the weekend. When I was discharged, it felt as though I were viewing the world through the bottom of an emptied pint glass. The horizon was distorted. Noises were muted. My marriage started to disintegrate. Seeing babies being pushed along the street in buggies caused me a stab of psychic pain. The essential difference between male and female same-sex friendships, is that female friendships are "face to face" whereas male friendships are "side by side". These phrases capture the frequently replicated finding that female friends like to "just talk" and view this activity as central to their friendship. Females compared to males also describe their talk as more intimate and more self-disclosing. Male friends, on the other hand, prefer to do things together other than "just talking." They share activities, such as sports, where their attention is focused on the same goals but not on one another. 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. An astute analysis of what it means to be a friend, as well as a poignant discussion of what friendship means specifically to the text's author Elizabeth Day.

Blue Badge holders and those with access requirements can be dropped off on the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road (the road between the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery). It is often said that what passes as left-wing politics these days is just red-washed liberalism, so absolutely has the critique of mass production and mass consumption been abandoned. It is perhaps for this reason that therapy-speak has gained such traction. Rather than recognising it as the language of passive consumerism, it is the left that has most vociferously promulgated therapy-speak – no doubt mistaking it as an instrument of progress. They are yet to discover that the woolly language of therapy works to cushion us from hard but necessary truths. Or that it sets up an impossible series of false expectations about what we are due from this world. They do not discern in the mechanically repeated phrases “that’s so triggering”, or “I feel gaslit”, the whirr of the production line and the chink of the tin as it is lifted off the shelf.I loved the structure of the book, with chapters about societal change e.g. "double tap to like" and "ghosting" interspersed with interviews with friends about friendship e.g. "Clemmie: Can friendships withstand big life shifts". Elizabeth Day is an author, journalist and podcaster and if you’ve listened to her amazing podcasts How to Fail and more recently Best Friend Therapy, you’ll know she’s charming, witty and incredibly open. Friendaholic encapsulates all of that and more, and it’s my favourite book she’s written so far. Friendship is unique in not having anything - no birthdays, no anniversaries, no ceremonies to mark it. This means it's also uniquely difficult to manage the development of a friendship in a careful and caring fashion. For any reader yet to encounter Katherine Heiny, this sparky new story collection provides a joyous introduction. Its title encompasses her protagonists’ antics in pursuit of – or flight from – love. They’re a somewhat jaded bunch with awkward pasts they never seem able to break free of. Nor can they stop yearning. And so a driving examiner only partially succeeds in remaining realistic about her workplace crush; a receptionist wears a taffeta bridesmaid dress to the office; a New York journalist, stranded by snow in her loathed Michigan hometown, finds sozzled closure in an airport bar. The deadpan delivery, the bittersweet wisdom, the sublime farce – it’s all here. Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of thousands of people forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them. With the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not 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 the friend she thought she was?

A book about Elizabeth’s infertility (trigger warning!!!) thinly veiled as a book about friendship. Bestselling author, broadcaster and host of the hit podcast How to Fail, Elizabeth Day grew up wanting to make everyone like her. A drop-off point at the Royal Festival Hall (30 metres) has been created for visitors who are unable to walk from alternative car parks. Our Access Scheme I related to it so much and believe if every adult read this, we could all be experiencing more honest, deeper connections. It was also, though, just comforting and funny to read!

Delivery restrictions

Joan herself also has an age-difference friendship, with an older man called Max, now in his 90s. She said, when I asked her about it, that Max was who she turned to whenever she was “deeply troubled”. Max escaped the Holocaust and his son married a 9/11 widow so, in Joan’s words, “he has seen it all”. When Donald Trump was elected president, Max was the first person Joan (a lifelong Democrat) called. She said she always sought his counsel in those moments, at “the hinges of history”. With the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not the ones she had been spending most time with. I was really excited to read this as I thought it would help me be a better friend and strengthen friendships. I couldn’t take much from it as most of the case studies seem to be about the author feeling overwhelmed by keeping up with friends (which isn’t the case with me!) Likely, the book exists to provoke this sort of concern – to draw attention to an aspect of life that has gone unexamined because “we’ve spent so much time heroising romantic love”. Whether it’s wise to scrutinise friendship in the way we’ve scrutinised romantic love is debatable but Day does a good job of convincing us the topic is interesting and worthy of at least some analysis.

Why was this? Could she rebalance it? Was there such a thing as... too many friends? And was she the friend she thought she was? You can also use the external lift near the Artists' Entrance on Southbank Centre Square to reach Mandela Walk, Level 2. I really enjoyed this exploration into the value of friendships. As a bit of a friendaholic in my past too, there was a lot here I could relate too - anxious attachment style, need to feel loved and valued and fear of rejection. I, like Elizabeth, felt that quantity somehow reflected on my own self worth, and more friends would stave off the residual fear that adolescent bullying left me with. This book speaks my soul. Love every word in this book and really feel like I learnt things about myself and what makes friendships my most favourite thing.Don’t miss the opportunity to bring your own best friends or newest acquaintances along to this unforgettable evening of intimate, enlightening and important conversation. I spent a lot of my time reading this book and thinking "Yes that happened to me" or "OMG that's me" or "I do/did that", so I feel it's a sign of a good book when so much of it relates or I feel seen.