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1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The relationship you have with your best friend is, in a word, epic. Italian author Ferrante echoes that sentiment in this stunning, emotionally intimate novel (the first in a trilogy) about two women shaped by each other — and their Italian neighborhood — in 1950s Naples, Italy.

2. Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchet
Patchet's clear-eyed tribute to the friendship she shared with fellow writer Lucy Grealy, who died of cancer at age 39, will wreck you. It's a moving meditation on loss and loyalty.

3. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
If your best friend went missing, how far would you go to bring her back? This smart thriller satisfies not just because of the darkly compelling writing, but also for Abbott's astute investigation of the mysteries of adolescence.

4. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
"Anxiety raised its head, like a jagged, ominous rock exposed by the receding tide, the fear that he would be separated from the group and end up entirely alone." Murakami's latest novel, a heartbreaking pursuit of past relationships, explores what happens when Tsukuru's greatest fears about friendship and (gulp), rejection, come true.

5. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche
Making new friends as you get older isn't easy. Just ask Bertsche who, newly married and living in a new city, goes on 52 friend dates in search of a woman she can bond with, someone who will pass the "call-on-a-Sunday-morning test." The lesson here: Friendships both old and new take some work.

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6. How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
Based on recorded interviews with her friends, this compelling autobiographical novel reads like a juicy, hours-long conversation — that rare tête-à-tête reserved for your nearest and dearest. Heti details the urgency and upheaval of modern female friendship with wit and precision. On how to be a good friend she writes, "We do whatever we can to make the other one feel famous."

7. Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Sometimes we're drawn to the most unlikely companions, an idea that plays out in this atmospheric novel about Alison, a former model, and her older, HIV-positive friend, Veronica, who are navigating a glamorous and gritty New York City in the 1980s.

8. She Matters by Susanna Sonnenberg
"Women didn't last," Sonnenberg writes in this thoughtful meditation on a string of frayed female friendships. For anyone who's ever wondered why a friendship imploded or why it's sometimes so hard to hold tight to the ones we love.

9. Just Kids by Patti Smith
It's the late 1960s when musician Patti Smith meets artist Robert Maplethorpe, and neither is famous yet. Instead they're two kids searching for a spark in New York City. Read it for Smith's poetic prose, the irresistible counterculture backdrop, and because it's a poignant reminder of the ways our friends save us and propel us toward greatness.

10. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore
The friends that haunt you, that dance at the corners of memory, are sometimes the people you long for the most. In this lovely, lyrical novel, Berie hopes "for something Proustian" to transport her back to her childhood in upstate New York and a long-ago friendship with an older girl named Sils.

More Book Ideas:
3 Feel-Good Stories Guaranteed to Move You
Judy Blume Reveals Details on Her New Book
27 Life-Changing Books Every Woman Should Read

This story originally appeared onCosmopolitan.com

From: Cosmopolitan US