She Matters: A Life in Friendships

She Matters: A Life in Friendships

From the bestselling “immensely gifted” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ) author of Her Last Death comes a stunningly candid, compulsively readable, intensely provocative book about female friendships. The New York Times called Susanna Sonnenberg “immensely gifted,” and Vogue , “scrupulously unsentimental.” Entertainment Weekly described Sonnenberg’s Her Last Death as “a bracing memoir about growing up rich and glamorous with a savagely inappropriate mother.” Now, Sonnenberg, with her unflinching eye and uncanny wisdom, has written a compulsively readable book about female friendship. T he best friend who broke up with you. The older girl at school you worshipped. The beloved college friend who changed. The friend you slept with. The friend who betrayed you. The friend you betrayed. Companions in travel, in discovery, in motherhood, in grief; the mentor, the model, the rescuer, the guide, the little sister. These have been the women in Susanna Sonnenberg’s life, friends tender, dominant, and crucial after her reckless mother gave her early lessons in womanhood. Searing and superbly written, Sonnenberg’s She Matters: A Life in Friendships illuminates the friendships that have influenced, nourished, inspired, and haunted her—and sometimes torn her apart. Each has its own lessons that Sonnenberg seeks to understand. Her method is investigative and ruminative; her result, fearlessly observed portraits of friendships that will inspire all readers to consider the complexities of their own relationships. This electric book is testimony to the emotional significance of the intense bonds between women, whether shattered, shaky, or unbreakable. Sonnenberg follows her harrowing memoir of her dysfunctional mother, Her Last Death (2008), with this equally frank assessment of female friendships. Perhaps because she suffered so much neglect at her mother’s hands, Sonnenberg looked to her female friends to provide recognition and nurturing at each of the key stages in her life. In grade school and college, as a newlywed and then a young mother, and during her parents’ deaths, she avidly sought out sustenance from her friends to carry her through. There are some stunning moments of connection here: one college acquaintance is unafraid of Sonnenberg’s staggering grief after her father’s death and steps in to both mourn with and comfort her during an extremely stressful period. There are also many brutally candid snapshots of female friendships gone awry, as some were put off by Sonnenberg’s voracious need, maintaining that friendship is a two-way street. What comes through clearly, though, are the author’s unwavering search for connection and her fearlessness in exposing both the highs and lows of the process. Women will find plenty to relate to here. --Joanne Wilkinson “In her stunning second memoir, a collection of linked essays, Sonnenberg finds universal truths in her experiences of female friendship.” -- Meredith Maran ― People (4-star review) “ She Matters is both a remembrance of vital friendships as well as a deeply absorbing portrait of the author herself…There are beautiful moments documented here…but ultimately She Matters is a deeply affecting ode to the ones who got away.” -- Mythili Rao ― The Daily Beast “ She Matters lingers with you, inviting you to construct a patchwork quilt of your own life and salute the many women who helped you along the way.” -- Susan Chira ― The New York Times Book Review “Sonnenberg is a gifted literary stylist with a stunning ability to write sentences that read like beautiful traps… She Matters artfully reveals the depth and gravity of love between women as they make sense of the changing and often treacherous emotional and logistical terrain of their forward-moving lives.” -- Emily Rapp ― The Boston Globe “I read She Matters with such a keen sense of recognition, seeing myself (and my own mistakes and victories) repeated in so many forms through the female friendships of her own that Sonnenberg examines so eloquently…Like all of us, I want to do better. I think (hope) this book can help.” -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed “I was dazzled by this wise and intimate memoir about female friendship. Sonnenberg writes incredible sentences: precise, musical, surprising and insightful…Sonnenberg’s engrossing stories of the highs and lows of her various friendships with women, made me feel newly grateful for all the crucial and complex women in my own life…Everyone should read this book.” -- Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles “Sonnenberg, who’s aware of her passions and ambivalences, and doesn’t hide from them, made me think about what a friendship is, anyway…She’s written something that interests, exhausts, moves, perplexes, impresses and yes, matters.” -- Meg Wolitzer ― NPR’s “All Things Considered” “ She Matters is a dark and intriguing piece of writing…rewarding…rich…[Sonnenberg’s] honesty