Member Reviews
“As you made your way through life, there were people who stuck, the ones who stayed around forever and whom you came to need as much as you needed water or air. Others were meant to keep you company for a time. In the moment, you rarely knew which would be which.”
The story mainly focuses on relationship of two women: Elisabeth, a new mother who finds companion and a friend in Sam, a college student and her babysitter. The story revolves around them and goes on as their relationship changes with time and get affected by decisions they make. The story weaves around all the supporting characters so seamlessly that not a single character seems worthless. All of them has their own part to play with their own separate lives.
The story also highlights class segregation in the society and their struggles, capitalism, IVF and some bitter realities of social media. There are many scenarios in the book which are hilarious and quite relatable.
So, without giving out any spoiler I’m gonna share an incident from the book which actually made me keep the book aside and laugh for a while. “This particular incident is about a woman who mistook a man being a “pervert” and then she posted a picture of that man on Facebook group with a warning to be careful. Another woman also supported this. In few hours it got circulated on every woman related blog and groups. Then next day, Original post got deleted with a statement that she found out that man was taking pictures of his own kids without any apology directed to the man or the family for defaming him.”
I could easily relate to the character of Elisabeth as an employer and to the character of Sam as a student. George is another character who’s very interesting. Overall, it’s a great read and recommended to everyone, especially if you’re into women fiction.😊
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher to approve the request to review an early ARC.
This book is extremely well written but for some reason I found it difficult to get into. Sometimes I think it's just the mood you are in at the time of reading. I'm sure this is a really good book and one I will return to again in the future to read.
Friends and Strangers is an exploration of different friendships and relationships. At first I struggled to shake off the feeling that it was very similar to Such a Fun Age”, and in many ways it is, with the relationship between a mother and her babysitter at its heart, but I was drawn into the story and the two central characters of Elizabeth and Sam and began to see it in its own light.
In many ways, nothing much happens in the book but it has a number of insightful moments and it is very gripping. I’ll definitely look for other books by the same author
I’m very grateful for my review copy. Thank you.
Whilst the story of this book was good, it felt rather long winded and I nearly stopped reading it several times as it was very time consuming to read. No big finale just a pleasant read about different friendships and boundaries and how things can be misconstrued and blown up.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!
I unfortunately DNFED this book at around 40%.
I really enjoyed the writing and found it was easily readable and the characters were interesting. However this book touched a lot on the struggles of the young mother and held quite negative connotations. I think I may have picked this book up at the wrong time. I will definitely give it another try.
Elizabeth has moved away from Brooklyn with husband Andrew and new baby Gil to live near his parents and a new post at a small college. (He has left a well paid job to develop his big idea - a solar barbecue grill). Elizabeth is a writer and misses her old life finding the other mums In her new neighbourhood limited and unsophisticated. She comes from a rich and dysfunctional family but now proudly refuses to accept any financial help from her father who has always manipulated her and her sister with money. The closest thing she has to a real friend is Gil’s babysitter Sam, an undergrad at the local college. Sam comes from a close Catholic family and is much poorer than most of her fellow students, and she idolises Elizabeth and her lifestyle. Told from Elizabeth and Sam’s point of view, Friends and Strangers explores themes of money and class, capitalism and the gig economy, inequality and dishonesty around finance and relationships. It is immensely readable with strong, believable characters as well as being insightful about the larger themes.
This book was interesting. I am not American and so found the main characters struggle to adapt to moving house very uniques- Where I live is very different. The relationships that play out are also fascinating- again I am nothing like the main character and so was interested to learn about her fixations and interests. I feel like I’ve had a life lesson with this book, It’s taught me so much. The twists in the plot, made the book flow- this peak into someone else’s world was hard to put down.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book about how the relationship between Elizabeth and Sam develops from employer/babysitter into friendship.
I do not live in America or have a new baby but I found I was able to identify with Elizabeth right from the start.
The characters were extremely well written and you get to know them so well as the book progresses, their thoughts and fears shared with the reader In a natural and engaging manner.
The more I read this book the more I wanted to keep reading to find out what decisions they would make and where it would take them.
My only small criticism is that when I finished the book I had a couple of questions unanswered and I do prefer all loose ends tied up.
This book had a lot of promise, and almost delivered, but there was something about it that meant, for me, it just missed being a really good book.
On the plus side - an exploration of what friendship is, the secrets between and within couples, how people have a public face that may not be their true character, how we perceive others and how they perceive us.
On the minus - the relationship between Sam and Elisabeth does not ring true. Elisabeth starts to rely on Sam, her babysitter, emotionally and as a best friend, too rapidly for it to be entirely believable. Elisabeth gets so involved in Sam's life, perhaps trying to fill a void in her own, and their relationship becomes so close, without any establishment of the friendship.
The title is apt - they are all both friends and strangers - but this book was not quite the compelling read I hope for.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Friends and Strangers tells the individual and interwoven stories of Elizabeth - an upper middle class journalist who has recently relocated to a sleepy college town with her husband and newborn son. and Sam, a local student and her babysitter. What should be a simple employer-employee relationship blossoms into a meaningful yet unlikely friendship, and the women share things with each other that they hesitate to share with their closest loved ones. As they get heavily involved in each other's lives, actions breed consequences - some good, some bad, all real.
The writing overall was superb, I had a clear picture of the setting and cast of characters in my head and I think this would play out really nicely on screen. I believe it's true that someone can mean so much to us for a season in our lives, and often in very specific contexts where otherwise the union wouldn't make sense. I've had relationships like this in my own life, and I though J.Courtney Sullivan illustrated it beautifully.
I would definitely read more by this author in future.
This was a great book for a long rainy Sunday afternoon. I spend a lovely afternoon swept along by the enduring relationship between a young mum, Elisabeth, struggling to balance life with a baby and and, Sam, a college student, who becomes a baby-sitter and friend. Having children myself I was able to relate closely to the character of Elisabeth and the juggling act, work and children create. I throughly enjoyed the exploration of motherhood and the connection between Sam and Elisabeth although they were at very different places in their lives. The creation of the side characters was also strong, particularly Andrew the husband and the bitter father-in -law; the families and relationships the two women encounter ultimately have an impact on their lives.
This novel is slow moving but charming and I recommend it.
This is a very long novel and, although it is well-written and kept my interest, nothing very dramatic happens. It is the story of Elizabeth, an author and new mother who has moved to a small town from New York and misses the buzz of the city. Her husband, Andy, has quit his job to pursue a market for a solar grill he has invented. She does not know whether she wants another child although her husband does. She is also semi-estranged from her well-off parents and supports her sister financially. Andy's parents are in financial difficulties and his father runs a protest group against big business exploitation. Elizabeth hires Sam, a student, to be a part time nanny. Sam is struggling financially (although able to afford to fly to England frequently!) and is confused about her relationship with Clive, from England. Elizabeth sees her as belonging to the supportive family she herself does not have. They become friends and Sam joins Andy's father's group. Themes of family, money and privilege are explored. There are several betrayals in this but the worst ones are committed by Elizabeth who is quite a selfish woman. The ending is a little poignant. Overall the characters are well depicted, but the book is much too long and a bit more drama is needed.
Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan is an enjoyable read about a new mum and the student she hires to babysit. The characters make mistakes and learn from them. It also explores themes of class and privilege.
Friends and Strangers is a powerful look at privilege, friendships and just what can happen in a single year. It's a book that is relevant and will resonate with many readers.
I had no preconceptions about this book, I didbt read the synopsis I just started. I was somewhat confused, and needed to plough on to get a feel of what was happening.
This book is written really well, the chapters are bursting with information, no skim reading in this book. I had to really concentrate to absorb the story of Elisabeth and Sam.
Because I didn't read the blurp about the book l had no idea what the story would be about (a new advantage and one I will try again). It made the story more engaging wondering where the story was going, what was the premise of these two.
As previously said, alot of information facts and background story. I enjoy when an author talks about a previous situation in a character life then the next chapter takes you back to explain the situation or event fully. This is a brilliant example of mastery in the skill of this, without it being preachy its naturally part of the story.
The story is beautiful of 2 very different generations of women who battle issues and problems together but leads to them falling apart. It's an eye opening read, the inner dialogue builds the story and I often found myself trying to get ahead to find out what would happen.
The book is not filled with filler passages and gaps of time pass between chapters which I love to see in a book, the author can jump ahead to the next stage without needing a long drawn out review of that time in between meaning that all writing is relevant to the story.
Highly recommended this book, it's a beautiful story which has enough factual information to trigger thoughts about your own life.
#NetGalley #FriendsAndStrangers #bookreview #2020books
There was nothing really wrong with this novel, the story of two women, one a mother and journalist, the other the young student she hires to babysit, but it just felt so predictable and unoriginal. There was nothing new, no new insights, just the same old reiteration of the problems of contemporary women, the issues they face of motherhood versus career, IVF, social media, employing “help”, marital misunderstandings and so on and so on. I felt I’d read it all before and the book failed to engage me. I gave up after a while and just skimmed to the end, where no startling revelation convinced me my initial assessment was flawed. Just not for me this one.
J. Courtney Sullivan writes a slow paced human drama, an emotional, insightful and compassionate look at a new mother and her babysitter's relationship as she peels back the layers beyond the initial idolisation and friendship between employer and employee. Elizabeth, a recent transplant to a small town in upstate New York, a new mother with a much wanted IVF baby, is a writer leaving NYC with her husband, Andrew, for a more rural idyll with family close by in the form of Andrew's family. However, it turns out to be far from a dream location, Elizabeth is finding motherhood a fraught experience, there is the tedium, the constant getting up at night, and she is feeling a strong sense of disconnection, a deep loneliness she cannot assuage with the local women she is surrounded by as she mentally distances herself from them.
Instead, Elizabeth is missing the life and people she has left behind in New York City, she spends her time on social media, including following her sister, and unable to tune into her normal ambition and struggling to get any writing done, her head a mess of confusion, she is laden with an inability to ground herself in her current realities. She hires Sam as a babysitter, who provides her with 'friendship', and is grateful for her connection with the baby. Sam is a student at the local college, trying to make ends meet, from a loving family with financial difficulties, working in the college cafeteria, where she feels more at home than with her fellow more privileged students, and has a London boyfriend. Sam wants to emulate Elizabeth, seeing her as the perfect role model, but it does not take long before the rose tinted glasses fall off and their relationship hits trouble as the issues that have been simmering below the surface break out in the open.
Courtney Sullivan storytelling is sensitive and resonates, touching on issues like class divisions, perfectly capturing Elizabeth's blindness to her own privilege and the impact it made on her life despite being estranged from her family. What happens to her father-in-law, the career he has built up through the years going down the drain, illustrating the turbulent economic realities in the US, how much harder it is to survive where big companies treat their workers so poorly, with the constant chipping away of the middle class. This is a well written and engaging read, on family, motherhood, inequality, power, privilege, money and politics, social media, deception and secrets. Many thanks to John Murray Press for an ARC.
I absolutely loved this book. It reminded me a lot of Modern Lovers by Emma Straub - no bad thing as I absolutely loved that book too! - and a bit of Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, except instead of racially charged satire there are low-stakes debates about motherhood, friendship, privilege and identity which are nonetheless well executed enough to keep the reader hungrily turning the pages. The novel explores the relationship between Elisabeth, a writer who comes from money and has just had her first child, and her babysitter Sam, who comes from a working-class background and works in the kitchens at her college (a fictionalised version of Smith). Sam, a little naive, sees no difference between her own situation and that of the Latin American women who work in the kitchen, getting them into trouble in her well-meaning but misguided attempt to change things. The Brooklyn (BK) Mamas Facebook page was a hilarious highlight and I loved the heroine's sister Charlotte, an appalling influencer who commits every social media sin under the sun, as well as the book's larger debates about what's happening to American society - subtly explored but still powerful - however, its real strength is in its attention to detail. Mary McCarthy's The Group gets namechecked (again) at a local book group and most of the social events the characters host are doomed, putting one in mind of Working Moms or Friends from College - this would also be a lovely Netflix series. The final confrontation between the women seemed a little manufactured and out of character, but has to happen in order for Sam to move ahead and self-actualise, while Elisabeth starts to realise her part in America's deep-rooted inequality and explores it in her next book. Lovely writing, I will be looking for more from this author.
I liked the writing of this Novel. It’s a very slow character based story. Elisabeth has just moved away from a city and hires a college student to look after the baby.