But the result of this was that she was exhausted (because she said 'yes' to everyone), and her personal boundaries were constantly tested. We needn’t ask what he would make of the wellspring of confessional books on offer today, each hawking its own particular brand of self-laceration. It gave me the context and lanuage to put into place the rapidly changing landscape of friendships during my 20s, and validated the way I had been feeling about situations past. For what Day has mastered above all, in both her podcasts and her books, is the language of therapy-speak – that Instagrammable lingo that works like a relentless sheepdog, herding the whole of human experience into pens marked “triggering”, “gaslighting” and “traumatic”.

For much of the book I felt like I was rubbernecking a car crash, unable to tear my head away from the scene of the disaster. Don’t miss the opportunity to bring your own best friends or newest acquaintances along to this unforgettable evening of intimate, enlightening and important conversation. I spent a lot of my time reading this book and thinking "Yes that happened to me" or "OMG that's me" or "I do/did that", so I feel it's a sign of a good book when so much of it relates or I feel seen. She said, when I asked her about it, that Max was who she turned to whenever she was “deeply troubled”. Whatever her motives, this career move has been highly effective and demonstrates a canny understanding of the market.When I was discharged, it felt as though I were viewing the world through the bottom of an emptied pint glass. This unabashedly personal book charts her attempts to “course-correct” by analysing the meaning of friendship. And this is the weakness of the confessional, everything is limited to the experience of the author.

From exploring her own personal friendships and the distinct importance of each of them in her life, to the unique and powerful insights of others across the globe, Elizabeth asks why there isn’t a language that can express its crucial influence on our world. In general I'm ok with saying you have more than one best friend but Day has made it quite clear she only has one and that she's super special. It surveyed over 10,000 people across the world and found that the average age for meeting a best friend was twenty-one. I thought it was clever to have a different friend for each chapter and the inserted friend diaries from other people she'd interviewed were good too (though they should only have been inserted at the end of chapters not in the middle of one). I think he was pleased with his metaphor of a blindfolded children’s party game, but I found it misjudged.Joan was exactly who I needed at that time and it felt as though the universe had looped together an elaborate paper chain of events purely to ensure our paths crossed.

In my single years, she set me up on dates and we’d debrief over coffee and laughter the next morning. This one really digs deep, is bravely revealing and makes me reflect on my own friendship habits, issues, and culture. Being good at friendship, which is not quite the same as being a good friend, is a core self-belief that many of us (often women) cling to as evidence that we are, in some important way, both lovable and likable. It states very clearly on the cover that it is the Confessions Of A Friendship Addict and this is very much a confessional.Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of many who were forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them – with the crisis came a dawning her truest friends were not always the ones she had been spending most time with.

So I said I wouldn't criticise the book for not being what I wanted it to be but then I went and did that anyway. In conversation with Waller-Bridge for this exclusive live event, Day unpicks the significance and evolution of friendship. For any reader yet to encounter Katherine Heiny, this sparky new story collection provides a joyous introduction. Over brunch a few days after I arrived, she told me she had broken off a serious relationship with her then-fiancé, before finding happiness with Michael slightly later in life. My only real problem with this book (other than the fact that I didn’t think it was possible for a person to have THIS many friends), is the amount of tangents and metaphors packed into each chapter.Photograph: Sophia Spring/The Observer ‘There is simply no predicting when you might meet a kindred spirit’: Elizabeth Day. The book is an easy read about friendship and I think it's very much a book that will be appreciated more by women, I'm excited for some female friends to read it so I can hear their opinions about it. She goes on to explain how she rebalanced her friendships, alongside an exploration of the evolution of friendships, and the types of friendships we might have (the fun-night-out friend, the frenemy, and so on).