8 stars: Very good

From the back cover: In today's culture, the bonds of female friendship are taken as a given. But only a few centuries ago, the idea of female friendship was completely unacknowledged, even pooh poohed. Dating back to the Greeks and Romans, women were long considered "weaker" than men and constitutionally unsuited for friendship at the highest level. Only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships. Surveying history, philosophy, religion and pop culture, Yalom demonstrates how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship - both female and male - from the Bible and the Romans to the Enlightenment, to the women's rights movements to Sex and the City, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history.

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Overall, I found this to be a very good read and learned a lot of information. I very much enjoyed the trip through women's history which is inextricably linked with women's larger role in the society of the time. For instance, the first section was on Greek friendships and specifically was not about women, because there just wasn't historical record. This section was used to discuss various philosophies of friendship, and is referred to in later chapters. The section on "Romantic friendships", roughly 1750-1900 or so, where letters between women has very romantic and at times erotic language was also enlightening. In some cases there may have been non-platonic interactions, but much of it was how people communicated at the time. An entire chapter is devoted to Eleanor Roosevelt. As I have read multiple books on her, it was not new information, but set in this book on history it was necessary. I give a star off because the book did not have me deeply engaged, and also because it only discussed white, more monied women, until the very recent past (late 60s). Some of this may have been lack of historical record, but that can't account for all of it. Most moving was an account of a woman condemned to the guillotine. She asked her female friend to be present on the route, so that she could see the friend and provide some comfort in her final journey. This is all recorded, the friend did so, wearing the dress she had worn when they were last together, and holding extended eye contact.

Some quotes I liked:

Guys get together and have shoulder - to - shoulder relationships. We do things together. As compared to women, who are more apt to have face to face relationships. Many women confide in their friends, while men simply enjoy hanging out together. All too often, competitiveness colors male relationships and prevents men from disclosing their frailties and pain to their friends. Hence men's intimate discussions are often reserved for their girlfriends, spouses, or platonic women friends.

CIcero gives us practical advice about how to end a friendship that has gone wrong. If it is necessary to break with a friend, he prefers that the friendship "should seem to fade away rather than to be stamped out." for fear that it would create hard feelings or turn into serious personal enmity.

Intimacy often recedes in order to make space for heterosexual love, which often - in life as well as in literature - supersedes female friendship. The conflict between women's bonds with one another and marriage is one that we shall see played out... right into the present.

"I find that there are few friendships in the world marriage - proof... we may generally conclude the Marriage of a Friend to be the Funeral of a Friendship." - Katherine Phillips

The first generation of New Women, who came of age between 1880 and 1900, were aware that their young adult freedom would probably end with marriage. That a stark choice would have to be made between marriage and family and a real career was a societal given, even for an educated woman. ... those who chose a career looked to their female friends to create a supportive circle and ersatz family. Some entered into long lasting domestic partnerships with other women.

In the early years of marriage, blue collar husbands and wives named their spouse as their favorite companion, but after seven or more years, the older wife named friends and relatives with increasing frequency in her list of preferences, whereas the older husband curtailed his extrafamily associations. There does seem to be a tendency for men of all classes, as they grow older, to depend increasingly on their wives for friendship, even as their wives find more friends outside the family circle.

{Toni Morrison, discussing her 1983 book Sula] Friendship between women is special, different, and has never been depicted as the major focus of a novel before Sula. NObody ever talked about friendship between women unless it was homosexual, and there is no homosexuality in Sula. Relationships between women were always written about as though they were subordinate to some other roles they're playing. This is not true of men. It seemed to me that black women have friends in the old fashioned sense of the word. I was halfway through the book before I realized that friendship in literary terms is a rather contemporary idea.

As more girls and boys grow up in a gender neutral environment, their attitudes towards friendship will carry weight in workplaces in the future. Like most cultural change, this process will likely be a halting progression of the two step forward, one step back kind.

(Epilogue) Are there qualities of women's friendship that seem to be almost universal? ... What common elements can be found in the friendships [across time and history]. From the many exampels presented in this book, were have identified four ingredients that seem basic to women's friendships: Affection, self revelation [talk to openly without the fear of reprisal and with expectation of sympathy and support], physical contact, interdependence. ( )

I received this book from GoodReads in exchange for an honest review.

This is kind of a difficult book to rate. While the text is informative, the overall narrative feels as though it is lacking. Part of the issue is clearly a lack of historical texts to use in order to determine changes in female friendship. This is mostly a history of white middle class friendship with a brief look at various "other" friendships such as "Friendship in the Workplace, Third-World Style", an unfortunately flippant title. Again, this is partly due to the lack of documentation outside of the dominant group, but I think the missing pieces were crucial to this history.

The historical connections to feminism were interesting, especially the chunk of the book dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt, but as a whole the book felt a bit dull. The text was broken up well into digestible pieces, but some areas were heavier than others, leaving some sections unsatisfying thin. The section on modern friendships was incredibly short with very little depth.

A decent book, but the lack of concentration in certain areas left me unsatisfied as a whole. ( )