Dallas - May 16, 2005

Best Friends Forever

"The Friend Who Got Away," by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill

Girls give a lot of airtime to guys — the ones who dogged them, burned them, or simply disappeared.

But men aren’t the only people going through the crazy turnstiles otherwise known as women’s lives. Other women are, too.

The Friend Who Got Away, edited by Vanity Fair contributing editor Elissa Schappell and novelist Jenny Offill and just hitting stores, is a collection of first-person accounts of friendships cut short, abandoned, or otherwise left unresolved.

The tales are alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking. Which pretty much describes the too-often fleeting nature of friendship.

These stories aren’t for the faint of heart. There’s one about an elementary school pal whose parents moved her away. Another tells how a mother’s death impacts her daughter’s relationships. And another explores what happens when one friend has a miscarriage and the other has a baby.

They’re all different, but they have a single, enduring theme: She may be out of your life, but her presence will be felt forever.

And that’s not something you can’t say about all those forgettable guys.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.