Book Review: Friendaholic, Confessions of a Friendship Addict, by Elizabeth Day

***** No Spoilers *****  

A few months ago I treated myself to a kindle and recently took advantage of a kindle unlimited offer and purchased it for two months. Whilst scrolling in the selection looking for my next book to read, I came across Friendaholic, Confessions of  a Friendship Addict, by Elizabeth Day.

I have heard of Elizabeth Day before- especially her book How to Fail, but I hadn’t heard of nor read Friendaholic and liking her style of writing already, I decided to give this a go. 

It’s written in a memoir-style, drawing on Elizabeth’s own friendships over the years, past and present, and what they taught her about herself, what they taught her about boundaries and what they taught her about what it means to be in a platonic friendship with others. 

Day proclaims herself a ‘friendaholic’, a person who collects friends as if they are stamps or fridge magnets, and is determined to be a ‘good’ friend to every single one of these people. We get whisked back through her life and meet the people that have been in and out of it, their friendship, what they meant to each other, all intertwined with stories of friendship from people across the globe too. These little segments made the book, for me, very special and gave a nice break between Day’s prose too. 

The book draws on all different types of friends: your best friend, your soul sister friend, your frenemy, your social media friends, your long distance friend- all of them, reflecting on each of her own with poignant detail. 

There are lots of interesting (in my opinion) academic references to literature and philosophy on the concept of friendship and human relationships too. Ones in particular that stood out to me was her mention of Cicero’s De Amicita, and Dunbar’s friendship circles. They offer a scientific perspective as well as her emotional one, which I felt gave the book a lot more substance and ‘upped’ it from just being a memoir/confessional piece. 

Here are some of my favourite and memorable quotes from the book: 

“It’s not that our friends become our family, exactly; it’s that they accept us outside the roles we perform with our close relatives and in doing so, they allow us to be a version of ourselves we might not previously have inhabited.” 

“As Cicero puts it in his essay ‘How to Be a Friend’: As a general rule, we shouldn’t commit to friendships until we’ve reached an age when our character and way of living are established and confirmed.” 

“I had no control over anyone else’s perception of me. So all of this trying to be a perfect friend was a fool’s errand.” 

Overall, I loved the book. It pokes your brain, makes you think about the construct of friendships, the different types of friends we have, is relatable and interesting. I 100% recommend this book and would love to read it again in the future too.