Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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The book was creatively written, incorporating interviews, anecdotes, ideas, and research. It was thoughtfully done. And Elizabeth Day is pretty entertaining. She was also vulnerable and open with her story. I especially appreciated her chapter about her difficulties having a child. 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? 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. 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). Day’s own experience provides the scaffolding for the book. A childhood in Northern Ireland, where she was an outsider, had a dearth of friends and suffered bullying, left her with an insatiable need to be liked. So, she began collecting friends. “For me, being bullied made me determined in later life to prove my worth,” she writes. “Becoming successful, having my name in print, being blessed with a wide circle of endless friends: these became inviolable markers of my sense of identity.”

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. She also made all of her friends seem SO perfect. And i get it, they are her friends. But shoot, people have flaws. it's okay to name them. Not all of your friends are the best humans on the planet. And on that note, she was often too self-deprecating for my taste. it was kind of hard to read at times

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We often can't find the right words to express the unique depth and complicated beauty of what friendship really is because we've spent so much time heroising romantic love. This book is an attempt to fill that gap.’

Items are left in our cloakrooms at the owner’s risk, and we cannot accept any responsibility for loss or damage, from any cause, to these items. We're cash-free 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. The public moralist, the philanthropist, the technocrat and the activist: this is how historian Matthew Kelly characterises the women at the centre of his intriguing group biography. The philanthropist is Beatrix Potter but the others – Octavia Hill, Pauline Dower and Sylvia Sayer – are far less well known. Over a 150-year period, they independently fought to establish the regulatory tools still used to preserve England’s green spaces. Kelly proves a fastidious chronicler of their campaigning and if his prose is sometimes overly academic, it draws vitality from his subjects’ conviction that in alienating ourselves from nature, we curb our own happiness. Alternative parking is available nearby at the APCOA Cornwall Road Car Park (490 metres), subject to charges. Blue Badge parking at APCOA Cornwall Road Unfortunately, for me, the book is most interesting where it is least like a confessional and most like a scientific exploration of friendship. For example the discussion of Cicero's De Amicitia or Dunbar's friendship circles are fascinating. What's less fascinating to me is Day's hand wringing about what text message she should send a shitty friend who she doesn't really like.But the above is completely symptomatic of this book. The data is interesting if interpreted the right way but it's not useful if you just throw it out there without examining it properly. Why not explore why people from other cultures report having more best friends? And this is the weakness of the confessional, everything is limited to the experience of the author. Chapters confiding incidents of ghosting, friendship breakdowns, the impact of fertility issues on friendship and so on are interspersed with chapters devoted to Day’s five closest friends, as well as short testimonies from an array of individuals. Day’s particular predicaments won’t resonate with everyone but her fluid, conversational style makes for lightly entertaining reading (with darker moments). Those who consider the book in good faith might even find themselves Marie Kondo-ing their friendship circle – holding on to the ones that bring joy and clearing out the rest. Niamh Donnelly

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.I'm careful not to criticise books for not being what I wanted them to be. It states very clearly on the cover that it is the Confessions Of A Friendship Addict and this is very much a confessional. As such, everything is couched in the author's own experience and most topics are presented as the author trying to sort out a problem in her life.