Description
Book SynopsisClose friendships are a heart-warming feature of many of our best-loved works of fiction. From Jane Eyre and Helen Burns’ poignant schoolgirl relationship to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi, fictional friends have supported, guided, comforted, nursed and at times betrayed the heroes and heroines of our popular and influential plays and novels. This book explores twenty-four literary friendships and, together with character studies and publication history, describes how each key relationship influences character, determines plot, promotes or disguises romance, preserves a reputation, sometimes results in betrayal, or underlines the theme of each literary work. It shows how authors from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante have by turns celebrated, lamented or transformed friendships throughout the ages, and how some friends – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Holmes and Watson or even Bridget Jones and pals – have taken on creative lives beyond the bounds of their original narrative. Including a broad scope of literature spanning a period of 400 years from writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck and Alice Walker, this book is the ideal gift for your literature-loving friend.
Trade Review'A few pages in you feel you are in the company of a sprightly, charming, well-read friend . . . a masterful story-teller, her short essays on pivotal friendships feel like entering sunlight from thick fog, you'll see and hear what you never noticed on first reading.' * Country Life Magazine *
Table of ContentsContents Introduction Childhood Soulmates: Jane and Helen - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) Liberty and Conformity: Tom and Huck; Huck and Jim - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Bosom Pals: Anne and Diana - L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908) Competitive Companions: Pooh and Piglet - A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) Mad Bad Girls: Meena and Anita - Meera Syal, Anita and Me (1996) Housemates: Harry, Ron and Hermione - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series (1997–2007) Students and Apprentices Prince and Philosopher: Hamlet and Horatio - William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600) Career Advice: Pip and Herbert - Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861) A Bystander’s Elegy: Charles and Sebastian - Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945) Crème de la Crème: Sandy, Jenny, Eunice, Mary, Monica, Rose and Miss Brodie - Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) Campus Collusion: Richard, Bunny, Henry, Francis, Camilla and Charles - Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992) Heart to Heart Inseparable: Rosalind and Celia - William Shakespeare, As You Like It (1599) Reserve and Recklessness: Jane and Emma - Jane Austen, Emma (1815) Light and Shade: Lucy and Maggie - George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) Three Cheers for the Singletons: Bridget, Shazzer, Jude and Tom - Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) Adventure Bickering and Bonhomie: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605) Partners in Crime: Holmes and Watson - Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes series (1887–1903) Host and Guest: Ratty and Mole - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908) Heroes of Middle-earth: Frodo and Sam - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954) Hard Times Loneliest in the World: George and Lennie - John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) Kinship: Okonkwo and Obierika - Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) Amazon Sisters: Miss Celie, Shug and Sofia - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982) Undercover Allies: Moira and Offred - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) For Better, For Worse: Lina and Elena - Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Novels (2011–2014) Notes Further Reading Acknowledgements Index
