Title:  True Friends

Author: Patti Miller

Genre:  Non-Fiction: Creative non-friction, Relationships

Year:  2022

Friendships are among the most important relationships in our lives, often outlasting love affairs, marriages, even, at times, family connections. The loss of a friend can be one of life’s most disturbing events, yet these ‘friend break-ups’ are little acknowledged in our culture.

In True Friends, acclaimed author Patti Miller recounts the joyful making and then painful ending of a long, close friendship. It is a deep and influential relationship in her life, but when it inexplicably unravels, Patti is left searching for answers. As she tries to make sense of this ending, Patti considers other important friendships throughout her life, questioning who we are drawn to, what we really know of each other and why some friendships endure while others end.

Evocative and intimate, this engaging book brings together the personal and the universal and reminds us of the centrality of friendships in our lives.

Get your copy instore and online (paperback or ebook): True Friends

My rating: *****

My review:

“True Friends” by Patti Miller is a heartfelt and reassuring examination of how we develop, maintain, remember, and dissolve friendships. Miller reflects on her personal experiences of friendship over the years, especially her relationship with Gina. Miller describes every element from start to finish, describing with raw emotion, her self-doubt when things went wrong, and her hours spent ruminating about what she may have done or said, or not said. 

Miller describes the process of recalling details of her relationships, and how her memories are somewhat fictional constructs based on her internal beliefs about friendship, her ideal view of the people in question and inaccurate recall of events. She describes how her memories are clouded by numerous variables and an internal retelling of the facts. Miller references The Epic of Gilgamesh and the many variations of this tale of friendship to help demonstrate how recall can alter over time. This proved to be an interesting example to me personally, as I recall reading/hearing a variation of this story as a child, but have no recollection of when and how I heard it.

“True Friends” had me examining my own friendships, my impressions of them and how we interact. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is thought-provoking and talks to the heart of anyone who has ever wondered about the loss of a friend. Simply brilliant.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.