Hannah Goldstein on how books helped her make friends
Dream Girls author Hannah Goldstein shares why some of life's best friendships can begin with a book.
When my friends and I turned eleven, we were vaguely disappointed not to have received our letters to Hogwarts.
We knew it wasn’t real, obviously – we weren’t babies, but still. Those books felt so alive to us, we could almost imagine ourselves sitting in the Great Hall. One of my friends even took to eating marmalade every morning, even though she hated the stuff, because that was what Harry had on his toast.
In high school we fell in love with gothic romances – the Brontes and Daphne du Maurier. Literature, we discovered, could be sexy. And we were here for it. The copies of our novels were dog-eared and full of notes, and we gossiped about the characters like they were our friends. Then the vampire craze came, and we devoured that too. I distinctly remember going to a dress up party as Charles Baudelaire, complete with two dots of fake blood (or raspberry Lip Smacker) on my neck, a copy of his poem ‘The Vampire’ in my hand, and a beret on my head. Most people had no idea who I was – an injured Francophile? Britney Spears in her beret era? – but my friends got it, and that’s what mattered.
I have always loved the solitude of reading, the way a novel can make you feel like you have access to a secret world as you go about your day. But the only thing better than finding a novel you love is finding a kindred spirit who loves it, too. Some of my closest friendships have emerged through a shared interest in books, because reading opens up ways of talking about our lives – our dreams and fantasies, our fears, and the way we see the world.
A vehement disagreement over a book can be just as thrilling as a shared obsession. Years ago, at the height of the sad girl novel, I noticed that a close friend of mine despised every book I recommended to her. While the feelings of alienation and anxiety expressed by the characters in those novels resonated with me, she couldn’t stomach what she saw as insufferable levels of self-pity. Since she was a teenager, she’d worked multiple jobs to support herself and had little sympathy for a sad woman wandering aimlessly around campus. I understood her critique and yet there was something in me that wanted to defend those novels – why was female sadness so insufferable? There were certainly a lot of sad and self-destructive men in literature, and we took their pain seriously. After all, who are Hamlet and Holden Caulfield if not sad girls? In other words, an argument about books became a conversation about our lives and the culture and systems that impacted them.
When my book club became tired of sad novels, I chose something light and humorous about family life. There was romance and comedy and a relatable protagonist. But over dumplings, a friend announced that she hated the book so much she couldn’t finish it. In fact, the sight of it on her bedside table became so upsetting she hid it. I was shocked. I couldn’t understand it. A few weeks later, she called to say that she was ending a twelve-year relationship. The book had been unbearable because it had reflected her own relationship dilemma in a painfully stark way. We talked about it for hours.
Discussing books has led to some of the best conversations of my life. It’s a means through which I have made friends and learned about their lives and the way they perceive the world. This is what I love about art, and why I have no interest in reading a book not written by a human. What would be the point? Reading for me is about connection. When I open a book, I want to experience what it’s like to be in someone else’s head, I want to see how it moves me, and then I want to know what my friends think of it – preferably over dumplings.
Dream Girls
by Hannah Goldstein
A love-drunk Shakespeare enthusiast and a disillusioned Instagram baker try to kill each other at a wedding. They're supposed to be best friends so how did they end up here?
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