The Book Of Friendship

A fascinating study of friendship, looking first at friendships in childhood and the challenge of maintaining them as adults. Barnard skilfully explores different types of friendships, from the personal to the social, and discusses the extent to which they create and are created by the societies within which they exist.

'As a child I found friendships alluring and confusing, even frightening. What would it be like to have someone you could trust like that My upbringing was socially and demographically isolated. I couldn't 'do' friendships. I was sombre and bespectacled. To my delight, at infant school, a girl called Dawn invited me back for tea. The return invitation saw Dawn in our dilapidated house, choking on a bay leaf because she had been too embarrassed to ask why there was a leaf in her food and had tried to swallow it. That was the end of that alliance, and perhaps the start of my interest in trying to work out this elusive, potent thing called friendship