friends and strangers by j courtney sullivan

The first 250 pages of Sullivan’s novel build a warm friendship between Elisabeth and Sam, and put into place the many problems that will come to a boil in the third act. She feels completely out of place among her “Real Housewives”-esque neighbors, who wind up their so-called book club by getting wasted at the local bar.Įlisabeth hires Sam, a senior studying Studio Art and English Lit, to take care of baby Gil three days a week so she can get back to work on the proposal for her third book. Take whatever you’re picturing and add two hundred miles,” Elisabeth is quick to explain. But since then her husband has left his job to pursue an invention idea and they’ve moved to the college town upstate where his parents live. Former New York Times journalist and bestselling author Elisabeth was happily settled in Brooklyn just a few months earlier, when she took a buyout from the paper, gave birth and joined the tony BK MAMAS social media group. “Friends and Strangers” also features a well-to-do writer.

Kiley Reid’s “Such a Fun Age” made a splash with its sassy, provocative approach to the operation of race and class in the relationship between a white writer and her black babysitter in Philadelphia. Courtney Sullivan - the second novel on this topic in the past few months. The fraught connection between a mother and her child’s babysitter is the focus of “Friends and Strangers,” by J. She’s not your friend, she’s your employee. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.Ī masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.Be careful. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her 'influencer' sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICKĪn insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the bestselling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions.Įlisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City.

Friends and strangers by j courtney sullivan