“Gould has created the kind of friendship that is not shallow, silly, or a plot sideline, but private, deep, and more real than almost anything else. It's enough to make your <3 sing.” —Annalisa Quinn, NPR

“A scintillating debut novel . . . No threat of veils here: just the biting, brilliant exploration of a modern female friendship.” —Megan Labrise, Kirkus Reviews

“Very funny . . . Gould is an expert at capturing some of those thoughts you don't want to admit that you have . . . Friendship is full of moments you will recognize, sometimes joyfully and sometimes a little bit shamefully. It focuses entirely on Bev and Amy's relationship; this is not a story about trying to meet a man; the men are present but are never the goal or the aspiration (Friendship passes the Bechdel test with flying colors).” —Amanda Bullock, Everyday ebook

“Emily Gould's new novel, Friendship, offers a vivid exploration of the missed connections and overwhelming isolation of modern urban life . . . Gould's willfully sparse prose often focuses on minutiae . . . Her novel is notably devoid of the melancholy images and flourishes more common to young fiction writers with literary aspirations.” —Heather Havrilesky, The Los Angeles Times

“Friendship [is] a difficult and at times unpleasant look at the intense bonds women form during this tenuous period of life . . . Is a woman talking about herself, or, as is the case in Friendship, to each other, inherently dangerous? . . . Gould is, in her small way, reinventing the way things are done and what stories are told, and for some reason this reads as either hazardous or dismissible for those comfortable with the status quo. —Stacey May Fowles, The National Post (Canada)

“There is a degree to which Friendship is, on Gould's part, a revolutionary act, a reclaiming of the right to write something impervious to inflammatory vitriol . . . There is genuine tenderness and complication between Bev and Amy, and the novel's best moments occur when the pair are allowed to just sit and chat about their imperfect starter lives. ‘Think of a child in my apartment that I share with my disgusting roommates!' Bev says, pondering her options, post-pregnancy-test.” —Katie Arnold-Ratliff, The New York Times Book Review

“As Gould exposes [Amy and Bev's] messiness--their fights, mortifying Gchat convos, acts of self-sabotage -- she almost dares you to judge them. But the specificity of their struggles (peanut butter soup for dinner, anyone?) and Gould's hyperaware voice lend the story of their friendship poignance and shades of relatability. A-” —Stephan Lee, Entertainment Weekly

“Because it deals with themes of female friendship and romantic hardship, Friendship will likely make a few girl-mag "beach read" lists--not entirely unfairly, as it's a breezy, light thing. But it's also a funny, uncomfortable book that lays bare all the anxieties of being a sort-of young woman trying to make it work in today's world--a search for meaning that is, of course, very adult.” —Jennifer Croll, Straight.com

“In a perfect world, a book that offers a warm and emotionally honest depiction of a friendship between young women should not need to be cause for celebration. In ours, it is. The third element of Friendship that I found deeply admirable, even heroic, is the subtle but unmistakable current of bracing feminist anger that thrums just under its otherwise breezy surface. ” —Michael Lindgren, The L Magazine

“More than an exploration of friendship, this novel is about what happens when the things we take for granted slip away and we are forced to come up with new ways of being . . . Gould does a fine job capturing the women's frustrations, big and small, and the ways in which their friendship serves both as a hindrance and a means to maturing.” —Shoshana Olidort, The Chicago Tribune

“Friendship, a slim, sometimes piercing novel, is a sharply observed chronicle of the inequality inherent in even the most valued friendships.” —Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post

“Friendship, above all, is about the hardships of adulthood. ‘Adulthood,' a very tossed-around phrase these days, encompasses and illuminates relationships, sex, careers, being able to pay our credit card bills on time, saying no, saying yes, going with our inexperienced guts, and understanding when we've won and when we've lost. I appreciated Friendship, because it made me feel less alone. I'm almost nothing like Amy OR Bev, but I still found comfort in their fumbling odysseys. And I think you will too.” —Gina Vaynshteyn, Hello Giggles

“Set in hipster Brookly, former Gawker editor Gould's latest centers on Bev and Amy, 30-year-olds struggling to be grown-ups in a world where moving back home while working for peanuts is often the only course. It's a wry, sharply observed coming-of-age story for the postrecession era.” —People

“There's a difference between mere adulthood, which is legally defined, and being a grown-up, which is fuzzy and subjective. For the characters in Gould's funny and affecting debut novel, this difference is sharply felt . . . The novel's depiction of the dynamics of friendship--how there's often affection and admiration mixed with envy and competition--feels authentic.” —Naoko Asano, Maclean's

“In Ms. Gould's . . . often sharply observed first novel, Friendship . . . Amy and Bev have just crossed a microgenerational line into their 30s, and there's a self-conscious, faintly melancholy tone to [the novel]: the girls' sense of looking back on the turmoil (and, in Amy's case, hubris) of their swiftly receding 20s with both alarm and nostalgia, worried that things are starting to add up, that the clock is ticking more loudly now, that the arithmetic of their lives is changing . . . Depicting Amy and Bev in the third person gives Ms. Gould a measure of perspective on--and distance from--her characters, enabling her to depict their follies and foibles with a mixture of sympathy and humor. The novel form . . . also accentuates Ms. Gould's strengths as a writer.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“[Friendship is a] very fine first novel . . . Most of us know honesty as a virtue, and fewer know it as a sneaky concept in the craft of fiction. The latter honesty is about eschewing cliché, mastering particular skills for making the reader feel confided in. The novel, or publishing itself, might be in jeopardy, but writing will live as long as there remains the distinct pleasure of being told an honest thing.” —M. C. Mah, The Rumpus

“Gould's sparkling . . . debut . . . is both a love letter and a breakup letter to New York City, and an invocation of the feeling of living there in your 20s. As the characters reach 30, the air of endless possibility starts to be replaced with the uneasy feeling that, to misquote Frank Sinatra, if you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere . . . Gould perfectly captures the entitled aimlessness of your 20s, that feeling that you need to buy yourself an expensive latte to cheer yourself up because you might not be able to afford rent that month.” —Rob Thomas, The Cap Times

“Gould's strengths as a writer lie in her ability to portray contemporary women. Both main characters, who moved to Manhattan--well, Brooklyn--in order to conquer it often end up defeated . . . Though Gould's book is called Friendship it's about much more than, as the main characters might say, BFFs.” —Grace Bello, Christian Science Monitor

“Gould is a gifted documentarian. The novel is filled with keenly observed details, especially about the outsize role that technology plays in her characters' lives. ‘Are those Google predictions real?' Amy asks at one point. ‘Do they work? They do, don't they. Okay, cool, another thing I have to start paying attention to so that my life can be fully efficient and optimized.'” —Nora Krug, The Washington Post

“Two young women try to create the glamorous lives they've imagined for themselves while talking on Gchat from their desks at their less-than-ideal jobs. Bev left her cool-sounding but dispiriting entry-level position at a Manhattan publishing house to follow her boyfriend to the Midwest. Bad move. Now she's back in New York, single again, and temping.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“There is a sentimental delight in reading Friendship and its roller coaster ride of urban highs and lows . . . In the end, Gould draws a vivid and convincing portrait of a friendship--in all of its human misunderstandings, disappointments, and brokenness . . . It is no small feat to animate and chart the emotional fluctuations and subtle contours of female friendships on the page.” —S. Kirk Walsh, The Virginia Quarterly Review

“Work--sustained creativity, the problems of receiving too much attention, too fast and too young, paycheques, temp gigs, what it all might add up to and protect from--is as much a theme of the book as friendship is. The novel has a disarmingly for-real sense of these kinds of women's lives, and features high-def, immersive verisimilitude about roommates, instant messages, storage units, job applications, buses, shirts, drinks and, largely, money; these are, of course, also the quotidian but hugely meaningful circumstances that create, maintain and end friendships, especially between women, especially in cities.” —Kate Carraway, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“A savvy first novel that, in piercing prose, zeroes in on modern ennui and the catalysts that force even the most apathetic out of their complacency.” —Booklist

“A sharp, sad, unforgiving (in a great way) and remarkably funny exploration of thirty-something female friendship.” —Nerve

“Gould's novel is admirably, readably realistic--she knows these girls and the world they live in (including the omnipresence of technology and the way that it pervades relationships) . . . Gould nails the complex blend of love, loyalty, and resentment that binds female friends. It is worth reading for the richness of its details (at one point, Amy is overwhelmed by the desire to put an engaged coworker's wedding ring in her mouth), and it offers new insight into the experience of young women.” —Publishers Weekly

“I read Friendship with great pleasure. Emily Gould re-creates with wit and insight the New York I know: a place full of fame and money that's not yours, where friends become family and lovers become ex-lovers, and the big questions about your life stay unanswered, and unanswerable, for a long time.” —Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding

“Truth-teller Emily Gould hurls her heart and her mind into this hilarious, bittersweet tale of the urgent, everyday need for connection between women.” —Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins

“Friendship is a moving, focused, highly readable, very funny novel, told with a calming amount of perspective by a trustworthy, precise voice. It is intimate and insightful regarding two decades of life (early twenties to middle age), and on the topics of endurance (emotional, financial), relationships (work, platonic, romantic--human), and jobs (temp, Internet, freelance art) in New York City.” —Tao Lin, author of Taipei

“Friendship is especially honest about professional insecurity and personal uncertainty, which makes it an especially funny novel. And Emily Gould's prose sounds so admirably up-to-the-minute because it so faithfully observes classical principles of transparency and directness.” —Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision