WAKEUP CALL
Two young women see their options dwindle
‘Friendship,” a new novel by Emily Gould, tells a tale that is familiar to New Yorkers. A young woman arrives in the city, is seduced by its temptations but then repents and finds meaning in life. Sort of.
The story is Gould’s own. Known for being particularly cruel as editor of Gawker, Gould quit and wrote a self-indulgent mea culpa for The New York Times Magazine accompanied by a sultry cover photo. Then there was her confusing memoir in 2010, “And the Heart Says Whatever.”
So the question is, can Gould fictionalize her experience, as writers do, and make not-entirely-fresh material compelling?
Amy Schein and Bev Tunney have been friends since they first met as entry-level employees at a publishing house. Amy was a designated winner, Bev a slightly desperate outsider from the Midwest. Now that they are approaching 30, the playing field has been leveled.
They are both losing at life.
Amy found near-celebrity y with her vicious wit at a gossip blog mocking the city’s “rich, powerful, corrupt, ridic- - ulous elite.” But a turn of events has reduced her to working at Yidster, a site with no clear mission other than to indulge the latest impulse of the rich siblings who fund it.
Bev has fallen lower. She quit New York to follow a boyfriend west. When the romance failed she returned for grad school, but couldn’t hack that either. Now she’s working as a temp to pay off her student loans.
After a nasty one-night stand, Bev finds she’s pregnant and can’t face an abortion. It’s Amy’s idea that they offer the child to a wealthy couple the two housesat for in upstate New York. Jason is the editor of an international design d magazine z and Sylvia S is a wild w child from fr an earlier e generation er in New N York, now no reformed and an compulsive siv about housekeeping. ho
There are further fu complications, cat including Amy’s affair with wit Jason, that tha bring the women wo even lower. low Amy and Bev stand as a cautionary tale for Lena Dunham’s “Girls.” This is what happens when you grow older but not up. In “Friendship,” we are meant to take a journey with these women, but the trip is a really short hop.
Eventually, Amy and Bev become painfully aware of the obvious, that unless you’re born rich, you have to earn your way. As a redemptive arc, it’s not much. Or rather, not enough to invest in a story about two women who really should have known already.