In Friends and Strangers, we follow two women: Elizabeth as she moves from the city to the suburbs after having a baby, and her babysitter Sam, a student at the local university. Each is trying to figure out her own path. Elizabeth is adjusting to post-baby life while keeping a secret from her husband. And Sam is trying to balance college life with her much-older boyfriend while making post-graduation plans.
This book started off with a bang for me. For the first 100 pages, I was riveted and couldn't put it down. I found Sullivan's writing to be clear-eyed and perceptive, her sketch of each women to be nuanced and insightful. It's a character-driven novel, so not much was happening in terms of action, but that didn't stop my enjoyment of it, at least initially.
But then this book started to bother me. For one, it has one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to tropes: all conflict comes from things unspoken. But the egregiousness of these unspoken things are not all the same. Some are actually good things (giving money, help with finding a job), while others are severe betrayals (fertility fraud, publishing grievances told in confidence), but the book treats them as if they are all on the same level. In each case, the receiver freaks out and refuses to try to understand the other side. It's all very exhausting, especially because some of the issues are quite petty.
Every character in here is fairly selfish and obtuse, but no one more so than Elizabeth. Nothing she does makes any sense to me. She looks down on others while thinking she is above them. She tries to control others with money while refusing to let her father control her in the same way. She lies to her husband repeatedly, on two major issues. She obsesses over other people's problems while sticking her head in the sand and refusing to deal with her own.
One thing in particular that made me uncomfortable is the way the book deals with the topic of having children. As someone who doesn't have kids, I found the way Elizabeth talks about new motherhood and the way she acts after having her child to be extremely off-putting. But then the book does a 180 at the very end, as if to indicate that a woman cannot be content unless she has as many kids as her husband wants? I honestly don't know.
Another thing that really bothered me was how Elizabeth tried so hard to convince Sam's friend that embryo donation was wrong and that she will regret it for the rest of her life. Never mind that she was helping a couple that could not have kids on their own, and by first agreeing and then bowing out, she took away that chance for the couple. The book's lack of addressing this made it seem as if it agrees with that stance, and that's rather troubling.
This book is also very heavy-handed in the topics it's exploring. There is a focus on privilege, that it exists in many different ways (not just rich versus poor). But that is spelled out for the reader many, many times. I was also surprised at how in-depth the book went into to talk about the corrupt system that is keeping the little guy down. The thing is, I agree with all that, but I just prefer books that make me think, not ones that do the thinking for me and then spoon-feed it to me.
For me, a great character-driven book has to show character growth. (Otherwise, what I am reading for?) But that just didn't happen in this book. The two main characters remained exactly the same from beginning to end. Sam was extremely angry with Elizabeth for helping, without which she wouldn't have the life she has. But she seems not to realize this. And Elizabeth continues to lie to her husband without any consequences.
In the end, I enjoyed Sullivan's writing, and I will continue to read it. But this time, I found too much that was troubling for me. And the parts that weren't, I didn't really grasp the point or mesh with the delivery. There was so much heavy-handedness in here, to the point where all the characters feel like caricatures of the points the author is trying to make, and it was just too much.
Readaroo Rating: 2 stars
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