In addition to the class and monetary differences, personal values were explored through the characters’ actions, conversations, and thoughts. Sam, whose family struggles to make ends meet, and the Hispanic workers in the school cafeteria. Sam, who is working to afford her college education, and her roommate Isabella, who is very wealthy “others.” Examples include:Įlisabeth, who comes from wealth, and her husband, Andrew, who doesn’tĮlisabeth, who doesn’t understand her privilege, and Sam, the babysitter who comes from a struggling working-class family Relationships in the story will remind the astute reader of the chasm between rich and poor as well as the conflicts in everyday life between the working-class and upper-class as well as the genuinely privileged vs. There are important themes and questions for “self-talk” that Courtney Sullivan conveys through the main characters, Elisabeth, a 30-something married mother of an infant, and Sam, a female college student whom Elisabeth hires to babysit and eventually treats as her confidant. I would agree with that however, I think that the emphasis on dialog, settings, and backstories is deliberately slow and successful. Many reviewers commented that Friends and Strangers is a slow-moving novel. They studied historic inequality in their classes, they read about racial and economic injustice, and still they were expected to ignore this uncomfortable truth, to live with it.” The housekeeping staff was almost entirely black, while black students made up just four percent of the student body. Sullivan’s clever writing makes this pick the perfect summer read-delicious and compelling through the last word.“There was also the fact that the college celebrated diversity, but no one ever mentioned the women, mostly women of color, doing the work to prepare the food, to make the place beautiful, so the students could grow and learn and thrive. What follows is the formation of an unlikely friendship that changes the course of the two women’s lives.įriends and Strangers ultimately reveals that happiness comes from authenticity and purpose, rather than wealth, success, or secrets. Lonely, exhausted, and unable to find time to focus on her next book, Elisabeth hires a part-time nanny, Sam.
But when she and her family move from Brooklyn to her husband’s hometown in upstate New York, her well-maintained façade cracks.
She has a beautiful baby, a loving husband, and a three-book publishing deal. It’s a compelling book that takes on modern issues surrounding adulthood, motherhood, and class.įrom the outside, Elisabeth seems to have it all. Told through the alternating perspectives of two women, the novel presents two coming-of-age stories: one of a young mother and another of her college-aged nanny. Friends and Strangers is a book about living an authentic, fulfilling life.
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