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  • Friends and Strangers

  • A novel (A Read with Jenna Pick)
  • Written by: J. Courtney Sullivan
  • Narrated by: Kate Rudd
  • Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (14 ratings)

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Friends and Strangers

Written by: J. Courtney Sullivan
Narrated by: Kate Rudd
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Publisher's Summary

A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick!

An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively enjoyable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick).

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly 20 years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.

Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

©2020 J. Courtney Sullivan (P)2020 Random House Audio

What the critics say

“Courtney Sullivan is a writer of extraordinary gifts, and this is her most affecting book yet, which I just wanted to keep reading and reading straight through to its climactic and emotional last pages, because its world felt completely realized, and completely real. Sullivan is a writer who offers up small human moments and large social ones, all within the frame of a truly good story. I loved it.” (Meg Wolitzer, New York Times best-selling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking)

What listeners say about Friends and Strangers

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Loved every character...

This novel was such a hit as every character was so interesting. The story felt very real with great connections. I highly recommend this great read.

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