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First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents

Reviewed by jessica t. mathews, by gary ginsberg.

It is hard to believe that there is any aspect of the American presidency that hasn’t been fully explored, from first ladies to first pets. Ginsberg noticed that there was one obvious, potentially powerful set of actors who had largely been ignored: presidents’ closest friends. These are the men and women who can relieve the loneliness a president lives with, help him think through what to do about a major problem, and say things to him that no one else can. The resulting book is an entertaining, sometimes thought-provoking read. It opens with the well-known, highly political 50-year friendship between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, during which they exchanged around 1,250 letters. There is Abraham Lincoln’s friendship with Joshua Speed, who may have saved Lincoln’s life from severe depression and probably did save his career. At another extreme are those friends whose main role was to listen: Daisy Suckley to Franklin Roosevelt and Bebe Rebozo to Richard Nixon. The latter two ate, drank, and relaxed together, “rarely if ever talked politics, . . . and often spent large chunks of time in silence”—but Rebozo proved there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Nixon. John F. Kennedy had already shared a close friendship with the British diplomat David Ormsby-Gore for 25 years when he momentously called on Ormsby-Gore to help figure out what to do at the peak of the Cuban missile crisis. 

• More By Jessica T. Mathews

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FIRST FRIENDS

The powerful, unsung (and unelected) people who shaped our presidents.

by Gary Ginsberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2021

A fresh, well-written take on the lives of our presidents.

A Clinton administration insider delivers a fruitful survey of the roles that close friends have played throughout presidential history.

Ginsberg comes to his subject by way of a long-ago spell of volunteering for the presidential campaign of Gary Hart, who had one well-known confidant in actor Warren Beatty and a lesser-known one in old friend and chief of staff Billy Shore, who “seemed to be Hart’s alter ego, someone with the right combination of intensity yet inner calm to keep an often pensive candidate switched on.” So it is across the span of presidencies: Thomas Jefferson had his Billy Shore in fellow Virginian James Madison, who himself would become president but who contented himself in remaining in Jefferson’s shadow even as he made substantial contributions to the Constitution. Woodrow Wilson had his “First Friend,” as Ginsberg dubs the occupant of that unofficial but influential role, in a diminutive Texan named Edward Mandell House, whose views neatly aligned with Wilson’s in most regards and who hand-picked many of the players in the Wilson administration. So it was with Vernon Jordan, Bill Clinton’s closest friend, who served numerous functions, from helping select staff members to warding off a post–Lewinsky affair threat of divorce on the part of the first lady. Perhaps most affecting in this series of portraits is, curiously enough, Richard Nixon’s friendship with Bebe Rebozo, a Cuban exile and influential banker who was seemingly glad to play “a subservient role” but who also knew how to deal with Nixon’s dark moods. Ginsberg does nothing to improve Nixon’s reputation as he recounts how the president eventually brought the straight-arrow Rebozo into the criminal conspiracy that ended his tenure in the White House—with Rebozo urging Nixon not to resign until the very end. There’s no real thesis in Ginsberg’s capably spun story, but there are plentiful insights.

Pub Date: July 6, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5387-0292-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: May 17, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | UNITED STATES | U.S. GOVERNMENT | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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Book review: first friends – ‘the powerful, unsung (and unelected) people who shaped our presidents’.

August 8, 2021 by Dorian de Wind, Military Affairs Correspondent Leave a Comment

The literature is rich with quotations about friends and friendship.

One of my surprises when reading Gary Ginsberg’s best-selling First Friends , a fascinating book about “the powerful, unsung (and unelected) people who shaped our presidents,” was the dearth of quotations about friends or friendship. *

But, on second thought and paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ginsberg’s book itself is a quotation.

First Friends does not need quotations about friends or friendship because Ginsberg’s own powerful words about the intimate, lasting, frequently history-shaping relationships between nine presidents and their best friends are the essence of real friendship and will be quotable themselves.

First Friends is about intimate friendships such as the one between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Friends who shared a (double) bed in Speed’s living quarters for four years during a time when sleeping accommodations were scarce and costly and when Speed’s close friendship helped save Lincoln from extreme depression.

Without his close friend’s “timely and compassionate intervention, Abraham Lincoln might very well have been lost to history,” writes Ginsberg. Theirs became a friendship that would eventually make Speed one of the closest confidants of American presidents. Speed’s counsel would help to save the Union even though Speed and Lincoln had divergent views on the divisive issue of slavery.

There would be other “First Friendships” that, according to Ginsberg, directly or indirectly helped change the course not only of American history, but of world history, in peace and in war time:

Eddie Jacobson, the son of a Jewish shoemaker, an early World War I Army buddy of Truman and then a business partner in the Truman & Jacobson Haberdashery, would become a critical champion for President Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel in 1948. “I think it’s the single most consequential example actually of how a lifelong friendship can alter the course of history,” Ginsberg told DailyMail.com .

Young John Fitzgerald Kennedy bonded with equally young British aristocrat and intellectual David Ormsby-Gore in pre-World War II London while Kennedy’s father was ambassador to the United Kingdom. Ormsby-Gore went on to become President Kennedy’s closest and most valued (unofficial) foreign policy advisor and certainly influenced and steered Kennedy through the young president’s and, at the time, the world’s most perilous period, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Later, Ormsby-Gore influenced a reluctant Kennedy to sign the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union.

Ginsberg also notes Ormsby-Gore’s deep friendship with Jackie Kennedy culminating in a quiet marriage proposal by Ormsby-Gore four years after the assassination of the president. A year later, Jackie married Greek billionaire Aristotle Onasis with whom she hoped to “find some healing and some comfort…with somebody who is not part of my world of past and pain…” as she wrote to Ormsby-Gore when she declined his marriage proposal.

Not as well-known as other First Friends is Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, a distant cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She, quietly and discretely, became President Roosevelt’s most trusted confidante, went on to command “intense interest and affection from the most powerful man on the planet,” and helped the “lonely and overworked president” navigate the Great Depression and World War II.

While others have speculated about a possible romantic relationship between Daisy and Roosevelt, Ginsberg is delicate and circumspect and leaves it to Daisy’s letters, papers and diary to sort it out. Reflecting on Daisy’s final entry in her diary “in candid words that must be respected on their own terms,” Ginsberg writes:

In the end, it may all be as simple as that: FDR – a lonely man shouldering the burdens of his office at a critical juncture in history – drew solace and strength from Daisy’s steady devotion, loyalty, and discretion. For Daisy, FDR opened the door to his world and made her feel cherished within it.

Ginsberg is equally discrete when navigating through the sex scandal that consumed the nation and imperiled President Bill Clinton’s second term. A scandal centered around the “Monica Lewinsky Affair” and salaciously investigated and prosecuted by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Bill Clinton’s, and Hillary’s, closest friend — during the scandal and before and after – was Vernon Jordan, a charming, prominent Black civil rights leader and attorney and successful business executive who stood head and shoulders above Clinton’s “large and diverse collection of friends,” an accumulation unlike that of “any other president in modern presidential history.”

It was a long, unbreakable friendship, one that got Clinton back on his political feet after his failed reelection bid for the governorship of Arkansas and one that helped save the Clintons’ marriage after the Lewinsky affair, but also one that threatened to drag Jordan himself into the Lewinsky maelstrom.

Ginsberg is not as delicate and generous when it comes to describing the corrupt Nixon presidency, but he does find some redeeming qualities in Nixon’s unassuming First Friend and perhaps Nixon’s only true friend: Cuban exile, Florida banker and businessman — “a gifted moneymaker” — Charles Gregory (“Bebe”) Rebozo.

Ginsberg describes Rebozo as being “much more comfortable in his role as loyal companion than provocateur” and offers: “In spite of his proximity to power, Rebozo never sought to advance an initiative or espouse. Nor did he even appear to enjoy or seek any fame at all as the president’s best friend.”

Rebozo stuck with Nixon throughout the “Watergate Scandal” that destroyed his friend’s presidency and that thrust him into the (negative) national spotlight

As with the Daisy-Roosevelt friendship, Ginsberg brings up the speculation about the “real” nature of the Nixon-Rebozo friendship, and offers “the most likely: that Nixon, even beyond his loveless marriage, found in Rebozo a level of comfort and intimacy otherwise absent from his life.”

Equally eloquently and powerfully described – albeit less titillating — are the friendships between three other presidents and their First Friends:

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House

Conspicuously absent in First Friends is a chapter on the 45th president’s First Friend.

While, in his book’s preface, Ginsberg is circumspect about Donald Trump’s friends and friendships (“… the strongly held perception — fair or not – that [Trump’s] friendships were transactional rather than genuine…”), he opens up more during a recent interview with Brian Williams in MSNBC’s “11th Hour. ” In the interview Ginsberg shares with Williams that he would have done a chapter on Donald Trump’s First Friend if he had been able to ascertain that Trump indeed had such a friend.

However, Ginsberg adds that his source “finally confirmed that the President really doesn`t have a first friend. Nor did he say he needed any close friends. [The source] said basically, the friendship just wasn`t part of his emotional makeup…”

In his preface, Ginsberg wonders “whether the presence of a real friend during [Trump’s] years in the White House…, most critically in those fateful last two months of his presidency, might have saved him from his worst moments…and perhaps provided him with unvarnished honesty at seminal moments when everyone else seemed terrified to offend him (and those who did were ridiculed or fired).”

Perhaps a tenth chapter with a single quotation might have sufficed:

“Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.” – Jean de La Bruyère.

* At the end of the chapter on Kennedy’s and David Ormsby-Gore’s “special relationship,” Ginsberg quotes Percy Shelley:

“ Friendship . . . a dear balm, A smile among dark frowns; a beloved light: A solitude, a refuge, a delight.”

Gary Ginsberg, lawyer by training, has spent his professional career at the intersection of media, politics, and law. He worked for the Clinton administration, was a senior editor and counsel at the political magazine George, and then spent the next two decades in executive positions in media and technology at News Corporation, Time Warner and SoftBank. He has published pieces in the the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and was an on-air political contributor in the early days of MSNBC.

The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.

First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents

• By Gary Ginsberg
• Reviewed by Kitty Kelley
• August 30, 2021

Presidential pals finally get their due in this rollicking read.

Imagine you are a contestant on “Jeopardy!” and you select “Presidents and Their Female Friends” for $200. The host says: “This 20th-century president was known for his close relationships with women.” You hit the buzzer and choose either John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton, both of whom had well-documented extra-marital affairs.

Unfortunately, you don’t make it to Final Jeopardy because the correct answer, according to Gary Ginsberg’s First Friends , is, “Who is Franklin Delano Roosevelt?”  

In Ginsberg’s enchanting hybrid work of history and biography, he describes FDR’s enduring relationship with Margaret “Daisy” Suckley in delightful detail as the person FDR held “closer to his heart than anyone.” Although Ginsberg doubts an affair between the distant cousins, he cites Roosevelt as the only president to have had a woman as his best friend.

Previously, readers have been treated to books on first families, first ladies, first butlers, first chefs, first photographers, first dogs, and first cats. For his first book, Ginsberg, who served in the Clinton Administration, ingeniously presents bite-size biographies of U.S. presidents and their best friends — and how those friendships influenced presidential legacies and affected the country.

The author wraps history and humanity in a sparkling package, concentrating on nine U.S. chief executives and their closest friends, from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison through Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan. It’s an inspired idea that will thrill anyone who loves life stories woven into presidential history.

Given the current age of tweets and texts, plus the nation’s diminished attention span, Ginsberg has devised a unique way to engage readers, fashioning 18 lives within 359 pages of narrative and perhaps sweeping into the dustbin the turgid 1,000-plus-page tomes of such as Robert Caro, who’s written four volumes to date on Lyndon Baines Johnson, with one more hulking in the wings.

If Mies van der Rohe was right, then less is more, and brevity is to be celebrated, as is exemplified by:

          The 23rd Psalm (118 words)           The Magna Carta (650 words)           Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (272 words)

The Great Emancipator’s friendship with Joshua Speed, who became a slave owner years after meeting Lincoln, is included in Ginsberg’s book and illustrates the bond between two men whose differing principles put a decade’s worth of distance between them before they mended their breach.

Probably the most bizarre first friendship in the book is the one shared by Richard Nixon and Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, a Cuban exile who got branded as Nixon’s bagman during the Watergate scandal. Pat Nixon called Rebozo “Dick’s sponge.” In 42 years, the two men never talked politics but shared long silences together, drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

By far the strongest chapter in Ginsberg’s book — and the chronicle of a relationship that changed history — was Harry Truman’s friendship with Eddie Jacobson, the son of a Jewish shoemaker and Truman’s former business partner in Missouri. It was Jacobson who prevailed on the president in 1948 to go against revered Secretary of State George Marshall and recognize the new state of Israel as the Jewish homeland.

Since, according to the Bard, “Brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,” I will be brief in my conclusion: Gary Ginsberg has written in First Friends a romp of a read. Enjoy!

Kitty Kelley is the author of seven number-one New York Times bestseller biographies, including   Nancy Reagan ,   Jackie Oh! ,   and   The Family: The Real Story Behind the Bush Dynasty .   In addition, she wrote Capturing Camelot: Stanley Tretick’s Iconic Images of the Kennedys . She is on the board of the Independent and has been featured in the Biographers International Organization’s  podcast series .

Support the Independent by purchasing this title via our affliate links: Amazon.com Or through Bookshop.org

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First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents

Gary ginsberg. twelve, $30 (352p) isbn 978-1-5387-0292-5.

Reviewed on: 04/16/2021

Genre: Nonfiction

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First Friends

The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents

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By Gary Ginsberg

Read by Robert Petkoff

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Description

In the bestselling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage , White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents.

Here are the riveting histories of myriad presidential friendships, among them:

• Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed : They shared a bed for four years during which Speed saved his friend from a crippling depression. Two decades later the friends worked together to save the Union.
• Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson: When Truman wavered on whether to recognize the state of Israel in 1948, his lifelong friend and former business partner intervened at just the right moment with just the right words to steer the president’s decision.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Daisy Suckley : Unassuming and overlooked during her lifetime, Daisy Suckley was in reality FDR’s most trusted, constant confidant, the respite for a lonely and overworked President navigating the Great Depression and World War II
• John Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore: They met as young men in pre-war London and began a conversation over the meaning of leadership.  A generation later the Cuban Missile Crisis would put their ideas to test as Ormsby-Gore became the president’s unofficial, but most valued foreign policy advisor.

These and other friendships—including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison , Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne , and Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan —populate this fresh and provocative exploration of a series of seminal presidential friendships.

Publishing history teems with books by and about Presidents, First Ladies, First Pets, and even First Chefs. Now former Clinton aide Gary Ginsberg breaks new literary ground on Pennsylvania Avenue and provides fresh insights into the lives of the men who held the most powerful political office in the world by looking at the friends on whom they relied.

First Friends  is an engaging, serendipitous look into the lives of Commanders-in-Chief and how their presidencies were shaped by those they held most dear.

• Biography & Autobiography
• "FIRST FRIENDS is an overdue reminder that deep friendship has always played a priceless role in shaping the contours of history. It gives us a fresh reminder of the power of relationships."     Tom Brokaw
• “One of the most important roles in any administration is that of First Friend, the person a president can trust completely and be relaxed around. It’s a wonderful idea for a book, and with his great research and personal feel for true friendship, Gary Ginsberg has woven together fascinating stories and memorable insights. His lessons are important not just for studying the presidency, but for understanding leadership and life.” Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of LEONARDO DA VINCI
• "Even if you're an avid reader of presidential biographies, you'll find yourself saying, 'Who knew?' all the way through FIRST FRIENDS. Gary Ginsberg combed through diaries, letters and interviews with an investigator's eye,  teasing out personal details about the intimacies of nine presidents and their best friends. It is one of the best reads of the genre, rich with well-told anecdotes, new angles on critical historical events and evidence of the vital importance of friendship for presidents—and all of us. This book is a joy to read." Lesley Stahl
• “Gary Ginsberg takes a fascinating and utterly original look at the most crucial of questions: How do we best understand those who occupy our highest office, and the first friends who supported them?" Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of TALKING TO STRANGERS
• “Delicious, charming and original, this examination of largely unexplored terrain—presidents and their best friends—packs a historical punch.” Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist and bestselling author of THE TIME OF OUR LIVES
• "This book was a wonderful surprise for it is engaging, entertaining and informative. Gary Ginsberg has opened an entire new genre and important area of presidential study—their close friends. This is an insightful look at presidents from the point of view of those who can have even more influence on them than their top advisers. Gary's reporting shines fresh light on the workings of the highest political office in our government. Best of all, it is a fun read." John W. Dean, Nixon White House Counsel

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Gary Ginsberg

About the author.

Gary Ginsberg grew up in Buffalo New York, home to two US presidents. A lawyer by training, he has spent his professional career at the intersection of media, politics, and law. He worked for the Clinton administration, was a senior editor and counsel at the political magazine George, and then spent the next two decades in executive positions in media and technology at News Corporation, Time Warner and SoftBank. He has published pieces in the the New York Times  and the  Wall Street Journal  and was an on-air political contributor in the early days of MSNBC. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons. First Friends  is his first book.

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In Sally Rooney’s Smart Novel, Conversations With Friends, the Narrator Strives to Matter

The first novel by the 26-year-old Irish writer Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends , wears its influences on its sleeve. The narrator and her friends are fans of Twitter poet laureate Patricia Lockwood. They watch Greta Gerwig movies, and like Gerwig’s most famous character , the narrator is named Frances. The novel’s blurbs and marketing materials invite comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis and J. D. Salinger, but those signals indicate little more than that you’re opening a novel about young people written by a young person. Frances and her friends, at age 21, are a little too old to be precocious in the manner of a Salinger character, nor are any of them desperate cases like Seymour Glass. They aren’t transgressive like Ellis’s pretty monsters. None of their struggles are out of the ordinary. Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes, and it’s hard to imagine Conversations With Friends appearing without Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Tetralogy” and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series as immediate antecedents.

Like Ferrante, Rooney puts her narrator in awe of a brilliant friend: Bobbi, Frances’s classmate from convent school, first love, and now spoken-word-performance partner. At a high-school dance, Bobbi “was radiantly attractive, which meant everyone had to work hard not to pay her any attention.” Like Ferrante’s women, the pair are of the left, but their communism, however firmly professed, is mostly gestural. When Bobbi acts too cool for school, as when the pair are smoking outside Dublin bars with male poets, Frances does the talking. “This meant a lot of smiling and remembering details about their work,” she explains. “I enjoyed playing this kind of character, the smiling girl who remembered things. Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a ‘real personality,’ but she said she meant it as a compliment. Mostly I agreed with her assessment. At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterward think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.” There’s a useful plasticity to Frances’s persona, but of course a narrator can’t just smile and remember things. She’s the one who shapes the story.

The central question of Conversations With Friends is how much of an actor Frances is in her own story, whether it’s her struggle or the case of a passive onlooker being jostled by stronger personalities. Frances and Bobbi meet an older couple, Melissa and Nick, and rectangular romantic tensions soon become obvious. Nick is a 32-year-old actor and Frances soon enough finds herself checking out shirtless photos of him online, and they begin an affair. Frances rationalizes her part in it by figuring his marriage has gone cold, that as an older man he’s the one in control, that she’s helpless before his good looks, and that he doesn’t really love her anyway. The little flirtations and many emails that lead to this muddle are presented in great, near diaristic detail, and it’s here that Rooney bears a resemblance to Knausgaard. As with Karl Ove in My Struggle: Book 2 , Frances is given to episodes of self-harm when things don’t go her way in her affair with Nick. At one point she punctures her thigh — as bloody if not quite as dramatic as Karl Ove’s face cutting after being rejected by his future wife. But whereas Knausgaard always portrays his alter ego as a frustrated hero on a romantic quest, Rooney’s heroine finds herself tangled in a web not of her own weaving.

Like Karl Ove, Frances is a child of divorce with an alcoholic father. Karl Ove’s late father was a violent menace, more given to bouts of rage before he took to drink than after. Frances remembers her father throwing a shoe at her when she was little, but it’s his later dissipation that brings her shame. Any of her infrequent visits to his house involve some tidying up on her part, washing dishes piled in the sink, binning left-out trash, some of it rotting. He calls at all hours of the night, slurring his words and incoherent. He soon flakes in providing Frances’s monthly allowance, and for the first time she has to take a job, pouring coffee. It’s a little hard to feel sorry for Frances when it comes to her money troubles, even as she takes note of how much richer everyone else in the novel seems to be. She lives rent-free in a flat owned by her uncle, and 21 is a fairly late stage to start earning a wage. A tossed-off short story she shows to one of Melissa’s friends ends up in the hands of a lit-mag editor who offers her €800 to print it.

The story is about her best subject, Bobbi, and when Bobbi finds out about it, she’s incensed, but as with most of the conflicts in Conversations With Friends, the feud is short-lived and the pair even return to each other’s arms. Somehow the entire novel manages to remain within the neutral territory of its title. Rooney can make the stakes seem high even when they’re obviously low, and she does so without resorting to Ferrante’s melodramatic swoops or Knausgaard’s existential freakouts. Partly this is a by-product of Rooney’s control of tone and her disciplined use of plain language even when she’s getting off her most charming lines. A larger reason for the novel’s appeal is simply Frances’s youth and naïveté, her natural role as an object of sympathy (especially during a couple of scenes at the hospital), as well as the sense that we’re witnessing exactly what it feels like to be naïve in 2017. But a few times the spell is broken, and it’s usually because Rooney’s characters’ extreme politeness and eminent reasonability leap off the page, as glaring as a typo. Frances learns who she is by listening to her friends tell her about herself (usually stating judgments the reader has already made), but occasionally these chats devolve into soothing coos of mutual reassurance. “Okay … thanks for telling me that,” says Frances to Nick. “It’s okay, it doesn’t make you a bad person,” says Nick to Frances. Conversations With Friends is a novel of delicious frictions delivered at a low heat.

*This article appears in the July 24, 2017, issue of  New York  Magazine.

• book review
• sally rooney
• conversations with friends
• new york magazine

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Mars' First Friends: An Educational and Heartwarming Story About the Mars' Rovers (A Social Emotional Friendship Book for Kids Who Like Science and Space) Hardcover – Picture Book, June 2, 2020

From the creators of New York Times bestseller Moon's First Friends comes a new, heartwarming picture book about the little red planet who just wants a pet! One of this year's best Mars books for kids and a perfect back to school gift!

In a solar system full of planets, Mars feels all alone. All Mars wants is someone to play with, but all of the planets are just too busy. Mars can't help but wonder…will he ever get a playmate? Until one day, Earth sends her little brother Mars his first friends: the rovers Spirit and Opportunity!

Learn about Mars' rovers through this universal story about man's―and Mars'―best friends―our beloved pets! With its charming text and beautiful illustrations, this sweet solar system story and bedtime read aloud for children ages 4-7 is the perfect book for little adventurers searching for more books on pets and space books for kids.

Why readers love Mars' First Friends :

• An educational and heartwarming story about Mars' rovers told from the unique perspective of Mars itself!
• Makes a fantastic back to school book, holiday stocking stuffer, or gift for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, or any occasion!
• Educational bonus content includes out-of-this world facts about the solar system, Mars, and his real-life pets―NASA's rovers
• A sweet introduction to the solar system family makes this a great family read aloud
• Reading age 4 - 8 years
• Print length 40 pages
• Language English
• Grade level Kindergarten - 3
• Dimensions 10.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
• Publisher Sourcebooks Wonderland
• Publication date June 2, 2020
• ISBN-10 1728205182
• ISBN-13 978-1728205182
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Susanna Leonard Hill is the New York Times bestselling author of Moon’s First Friends, as well as many other award-winning books for children. She does frequent school and library visits, teaches picture book writing, and offers picture book critiques. She lives in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley with her children and two rescue dogs.

Elisa Paganelli attended the Art Institute in Modena and the illustration course at IED European Institute of Design in Turin, Italy, and has worked as a creative designer since she was a young student. Over the years, she has run a design shop and studio, received awards as a young female entrepreneur, and today works as an illustrator full time from her office accompanied by her dogs and cats.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sourcebooks Wonderland (June 2, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 40 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1728205182
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1728205182
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 4 - 8 years
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ Kindergarten - 3
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
• #2,207 in Children's Pet Books (Books)
• #3,771 in Children's Siblings Books (Books)
• #16,229 in Children's Friendship Books

About the authors

Susanna leonard hill.

Susanna is the New York Times Bestselling Author of MOON'S FIRST FRIENDS: ONE GIANT LEAP FOR FRIENDSHIP, and the award winning author of over 25 more books for children, including PUNXSUTAWNEY PHYLLIS, CAN'T SLEEP WITHOUT SHEEP, and the popular WHEN YOUR LION NEEDS A BATH series. Her books have been translated into French, Dutch, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai. Susanna lives in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley with her children and two rescue dogs. She loves chocolate, animals, and being outdoors. There are lots of activities to go along with her books at http://susannahill.com/for-teachers-and-parents/classroom-guides/ and http://susannahill.com/for-teachers-and-parents/coloring-pages-activities/

Elisa Paganelli

Elisa Paganelli was born in Modena (Italy) in 1985, and since childhood books have been her bestfriends.

After completing artistic studies she made a career in advertising and has been the founder and owner of a small award winning design and trade business. She now lives and works in UK as a freelance Illustrator and Creative Designer, accompanied by her beloved pets.

Elisa loves quietness, the wind and she truly feels home when in the wild nature.

On her bedside table you’ll find a pile of psychology books, and very often one of her cats.

https://elisapaganelli.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/elisapaganelli_illustration

Twitter: https://twitter.com/elisaupsidedown

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEvBHZNQ4cfIcOkQ2bSjJdQ

Sito web: www.elisapaganelli.com

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