Bad Friend

How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship

By: Tiffany Watt Smith

Narrated by: Tiffany Watt Smith

This smart and thought-provoking memoir, history, and cultural critique about the turmoil and complexity of female friendship is read by the author.

"Smith's gift for journalistic narrative...will make a lot of listeners hear it in a more personal way" —AudioFile on The Book of Human Emotions

Our culture today is inundated with narratives about the strength of female friendship, whether through images of girl power, BFFs, or work wives. Yet cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith has always found her own life much messier. She has had dramatic friend breakups, friendships that felt like too much or not enough, friendships that drifted into silence, and friendships built on convenience rather than a meeting of minds. And there are older cultural scripts to contend with: the competitive rival, the jealous backstabber, the underminer, the fair-weather friend.

We have all been bad friends. It’s impossible to be a perfect one; as Watt Smith points out, women’s friendships have long been magnified, scrutinized, praised, and admonished, creating a legacy of impossible ideals. In Bad Friend, Watt Smith reflects on her own experience and thoroughly mines the rich cultural history of female friendship to look for a new paradigm that might encompass the struggles along with the joy.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.

Critic reviews

"Cultural historian Smith explores fraught relationships between women in this insightful blend of memoir and history... a moving and incisive analysis of an oft-discussed subject."
—Publishers Weekly

Tea time story vibes

There is a lot of history involved in the topic of friendships and how it is constantly evolving from the past, present, and likely future. However, I find it very hard to be engaged when the contents are very much a gossipy style and just general thoughts and personal life experiences. I guess I was looking for more practical ways to improve my behaviors and view on friendship, that this book was not fitting my expectations. As far as a favorite chapter, I enjoyed the ending chapter as it summed up a lot of the book, in which the middle of the boom goes through in great detail (although again, I felt some of it was unnecessary as far as practicality is concerned.)