The intensity of female friendship explored
‘From the days of Homer on,’ Vera Brittain wrote, ‘the friendships of men have enjoyed glory and acclamation, but the friendships of women, in spite of Ruth and Naomi, have usually been not merely unsung, but mocked, belittled and falsely interpreted.’ Rachel Cooke’s anthology – inspired in part by her own ardent friendship with the late Carmen Callil – seeks to redress that. It was, as Cooke reports in her introduction, more of a challenge than she’d anticipated. Every other popular novel these days may be about female friendship (‘The result,’ Cooke semi-grumbles, ‘both of feminism and, I think, of capitalism’), but before Jane Austen, ‘fully realised and articulated friendships
