Friendship and the Novel : McGill-Queen's University Press : 9780228020370 : 0228020379 : 13 Feb 2024 : Friends are at the centre of novels by everyone from George Eliot to Elena Ferrante. It is nearly impossible to name a work of fiction that is not enriched by the tensions and magnetisms of friendship. Friendship and the Novel focuses on the affective and narrative possibilities created by friendship in fiction. Friendship enables plots about rivalry, education, compassion, pity, deceit, betrayal, animosity, and breakup. It crosses boundaries of gender, class, nationality, disposition, race, age, and experience. Some novels offer lessons about distinguishing good friends from bad. In a Bildungsroman, friends contribute to the development of the protagonist through example or advice, as if novels were manuals for making and keeping friends. Sometimes sparks fly between friends and friendship swerves into sexual intimacy. Sally Rooney and other contemporary writers take friendship onli