Seven books about teen friendships

Brittany Ackerman is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University's Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. Since graduation, she has completed a residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, and has attended the Mont Blanc Workshop in Chamonix, France under the instruction of Alan Heathcock. She has also attended the Writers by Writers Methow Valley Workshop under the leadership of Ross Gay.

Her first collection of essays and winner of the 2016 Nonfiction Award, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018. Her debut novel, The Brittanys, it out now with Vintage.

At Electric Lit Ackerman tagged seven "books about teen friendships from the 1970s to 2000s," including:

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Berie is 15 when she meets Sils at her job in Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sells tickets and Sils gets to play Cinderella. It’s the kind of friendship where doing nothing becomes everything, listening to records, hitching rides to concerts, snacking on whatever you can find in the fridge, sharing clothes, sharing lives. Berie is envious when Sils gets a boyfriend, Mike, and contemplates her own womanhood and existence:

I only wanted my body to bloom and bleed and be loved. I was raw with want, but in part it was a simple want, one made for easy satisfaction, quick drama, deep life: I wanted to go places and do things with Sils.

Their easy-going, almost dream-like friendship is challenged when Sils needs Berie’s help and the tables are turned. Lorrie Moore’s writing is masterful amidst the backdrop of Storyland, where fairytale characters smoke cigarettes in costume on their break. One summer changes everything for Berie, who ultimately, like the rest of us, just wants to find where she fits in, how she can blossom, and when she’ll be loved.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue