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A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found
by Christie Tate
From the author of Group, a New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club Pick, comes a moving, heartwarming, and powerful memoir about Christie Tate's lifelong struggle to sustain female friendship, and the friend who helps her find the human connection she seeks.
After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won't commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.
Or so she thought. Weeks after giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift from a friend. Meredith, twenty years older and always impeccably accessorized, gives Christie a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. "The work never ends, right?" she says with a wink.
Christie isn't so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of "apartness" that has plagued her since childhood isn't magically going away now that she's in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach—and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. But when Meredith becomes ill and Christie's baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she's forced to face her deepest fears in honor of the woman who finally showed her how to be a friend.
Poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, and emotionally satisfying, B.F.F. explores what happens when we finally break the habits that impair our ability to connect with others, and the ways that one life—however messy and imperfect—can change another.
"In her heartfelt memoir, Tate reflects on the implosion of her past female friendships ... [She] takes accountability for her actions ('I'm a work in progress'), and she captures the transformative power of friendship ... Readers will be moved by this outstanding portrait of self-excavation." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A meaningful, memorable journey from inner pain to honest, open, and enduring friendship." - Kirkus Reviews
"Tate's chaotic yet heartwarming first book [Group] was all about the unconventional group therapy setting that helped her work through her issues with intimacy... In her second memoir, Tate focuses on the elusive intimacy of friendship, recounting the tumultuous, emotional and funny process of learning how to have and be a friend. It yet again strikes that perfect balance of an author spilling the dirt and baring her soul." - BookPage
"In close parallel to her debut, Group, Tate's second memoir is another long look at a lifetime's work of healing relationships ... Written in three understandable, relatable parts—'What It Was Like,' 'What Happened,' 'What It's Like Now'—Tate's book shows readers how deep the work had to go for her to change." - Booklist
"B.F.F. is a love story about the miracle of friendship. But it's also an admirably vulnerable, heartbreaking-meets-funny self-interrogation. Reckoning with failed or faltering friendships—the ones that feel like auditions for a part you're desperate to play, or high-stakes competitions, or even love triangles—means reckoning with the kind of friend you are. It means facing yourself. B.F.F. made me laugh, cry, and cringe with recognition, page after page. It made me want to pick up the phone and start calling my friends." - Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
This information about B.F.F. was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christie Tate is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese's Book Club selection. She has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and elsewhere, and she lives in Chicago with her family.
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