Elizabeth Day’s Friendaholic was mentioned somewhere in my social media relatively soon after its publication in 2024. Was it LitHub? Was it a podcast? I can’t quite remember. But it came into my life at a time when I was reflecting on my own (dysfunctional) friendships and relationship patterns, and a title like Friendaholic spoke to my preferred method of integrating into Swedish society. It ended up on my TBR, which is how it turned into an impulse purchase at The English Bookshop February last year, which means by the time I read it in May it had been in my library for over a year. In terms of my annual reading goals, it’s a grand slam.
Friendaholic is a squirrely little beast in terms of genre. It’s non-fiction, it’s self-help, it’s memoir. Day takes us through some of her own friendships, both successes and failures, with a dash of some light research and interviews. Whether or not there’s a confessional aspect to it for Day isn’t for me to say, but the main thrust of the book seems to be that by reflecting on her friendship patterns and what research suggests, she can help a reader in a similar situation or with similar hang-ups.
Overall I enjoyed reading it, but I’m not sure if there was much in Friendaholic that was new to me in any meaningful way. The drawback of Day’s memoir approach is that if you don’t relate to her personal narrative, there’s really nothing of interest. I could have probably just as well skipped the chapter on infertility, for example, because that’s not a factor in my life.
By reader request, Day has shared the questions she used for the interviews sprinkled throughout the book. I don’t know if I have the nerve to sit my friends down and ask them about (our) friendship, but maybe you do?
