In the Name of Friendship: A Novel (Classic Feminist Writers) - Hardcover

Marilyn French is "brilliant . . . full of life and passions that ring true as crystal." --The Washington Post

"French brings a novelist's eye, a scholar's sense of detail, and a feminist's worldview . . . [this is] a novel for women with a progressive perspective on gender bias and an old-fashioned fondness for discussing the curveballs life lobs." --Publishers Weekly

"Without romanticizing women's friendships, she shows them to be the saving grace of civilization." --Gloria Steinem

"French continues to write about the inner lives of women with insight and intimacy." --The New York Times Book Review

"This finely detailed group portrait . . . [celebrating] women's cherishing friendships and creativity offers striking observations about how and why women's lives have improved and suggests that . . . it's time to bring progressive ideas . . . out into the light." --Booklist

Marilyn French’s seven million copy bestseller The Women’s Room crystallized the issues that ignited the women’s movement. Now the acclaimed author updates that classic with a new exploration of the truths and realities behind women’s lives. In the Name of Friendship dares to investigate how the women’s movement changed the lives of those it touched and what hurdles it left to cross.

Set in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, this wise novel is a group portrait of four disparate women who forge life-altering friendships despite personalities that vary as greatly as their vocations and ages. The novel weaves together a series of family crises with the friendships that help the four women refashion their lives. Maddy, the seventy-six-year-old real estate agent and matriarch of the group, struggles with the gradual death of her angry and rebellious Vietnam-marked son; fifty-year-old Alicia fights to reconnect her gay son with her newly retired husband; seventy-year-old musician Emily strives to bridge the gap with her estranged niece right at the moment her composition career starts to finally bloom; and Jenny, the thirty-year-old painter and baby of the group, questions the life she has created with her successful painter husband and tries to decide if she wants more from life.

With this unusual group of multi-generational ladies, French tells a truly rare tale about four women who accidentally come into each other’s lives and in the process form an enduring friendship. It is a story of supporting one another, of looking at the grim conflicts created by cultural expectations of women, and realizing you are not alone truly a tale of continuing hope.