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    Best of Friends: A Novel
    Best of Friends: A Novel
    Best of Friends: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Best of Friends: A Novel

    Written by Kamila Shamsie

    Narrated by Tania Rodrigues

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces.” —Madeline Miller

    “A shining tour de force about a long friendship’s respects, disrespects, loyalties and moralities.” —Ali Smith 

    From the acclaimed author of Home Fire, the moving and surprising story of a lifelong friendship and the forces that bring it to the breaking point

    Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though—or maybe because—they are unlike in nearly every way. Yet they never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their values, not even after the fateful night when a moment of adolescent impulse upends their plans for the future.
     
    Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. But when two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their bedrock differences—and find out whether their friendship can survive.
     
    Thought-provoking, compassionate, and full of unexpected turns, Best of Friends offers a riveting take on an age-old question: Does principle or loyalty make for the better friend?
     
     
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Audio
    Release dateSep 27, 2022
    ISBN9780593612095
    Author

    Kamila Shamsie

    Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. She is the author of seven previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women's Bailey's Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her novel Home Fire won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London. @kamilashamsie

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    Reviews for Best of Friends

    3.5/5

    60 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5

      Nov 22, 2023

      This was a surprise to me - very refreshing to read. I was engrossed by the characters and the plotline, which was never predictable and didn't resort to tropes. Recommend!!
    • 5/5

      Mar 10, 2023

      Two fourteen year old girls in Karachi, Pakistan in the summer of 1988 are the very best of friends, although they are from slightly different social backgrounds. Zahara’s father is a journalist and popular sports show anchor; Maryam is the daughter of a very wealthy manufacturing family.

      Nevertheless they share everything – until one night, longing for freedom not to be found in their country, they attend a party and get into a car with two boys. One is a school mate crushing on Maryam. The other, the driver, is older, and out to terrorize the rich girls. The two girls hide what truly happened that night getting into the car and which of the two girls was truly to blame.

      Their friendship continues – and we jump to London 2019. Both girls are successful, leading very different lives and with very differently focused careers – Zahara the CEO of an international justice organization and Maryam the head of a business empire and learning how it can be used politically to further her financial agenda.

      But then, like ghosts from the past, the two boys-now-men from the 1988 incident insert themselves into Maryam and Zahara’s lives. The carefully patched over places of the friendship are strained and the girls’ basic characters are revealed.

      I thought this was an excellent book. Yes, it was about relationships and character driven, but it also had suspense and drama. The story is played out in front of Pakistan’s political situation with threats by General Zia-ul-Haq against Zahara's father to the election and subsequent assassination of Benazir Bhutta. The societal expectations of these Islamic girls, even though they were from the most liberal strata were clear and concise. The story could not have existed outside these constraints and historical events.
    • 4/5

      Nov 19, 2022

      Shamsie really pulled me into this story about a friendship during the teen years and then in middle age.
    • 4/5

      Oct 31, 2022

      As the story opens, the two protagonists, Zahra and Maryam, are fourteen years old living in Karachi in 1988. Though they come from quite different circumstances, they are best friends experiencing the usual teenage concerns. Zahra makes a decision that puts them in a dangerous situation, resulting in a change in the trajectories of their lives.

      The narrative then shifts to 2019. Zahra and Maryam have taken different paths, and we find them in London. They are in their forties and still friends, but at opposite ends of the political spectrum. The storyline follows the changes in their friendship and how difficult it can be to maintain when values differ. The political situations in both Pakistan and the UK form the backdrop to both timelines.

      Themes include migration issues, justice, convictions, betrayal, and loyalty. Kamila Shamsie writes beautifully. I felt invested in the narrative, especially the first three-quarters of the book. The ending was not quite what I expected, but it makes a point that is particularly relevant in today’s society.
    • 5/5

      Oct 26, 2022

      This book is about many things: how women and girls are treated differently from boys and men, influence, power, privacy, friendship, democracy and so on. Like most readers it seems, I thought the first part, set in Karachi in 1988, was the strongest. The details of that era really rang true for me, even though I was brought up on the other side of the world. The later section showed best friends Maryam and Zhara making assumptions about each other based on their childhood bond rather than the women they have truly become, but it was less interesting and overlong, although the bits where 'two troubling figures from their past resurface' (from the blurb) was quite exciting.
    • 4/5

      Oct 17, 2022

      In 1980s Pakistan, Maryam and Zahra are the eponymous best friends in Kamila Shamsie’s new novel. In the first half of the book, Shamsie explores their lives and relationships in a Karachi still dominated by military rule but about to blossom under a new Democracy. The girls also struggle to find a balance between family obligations and the freedom they desire until a scary evening changes everything. Shamsie then jumps ahead to 2019 London where Maryam and Zahra remain best friends even though their lives have gone in very different directions. Best of Friends examines friendship in the face of history and difficulty, as well as Pakistani culture and the modern issues of immigration, social media, and surveillance. Shamsie packs a lot into the second half of the book, and as a result, it is less successful than the first, but overall Best Of Friends still provides readers with a good story that literary fiction fans will enjoy.
    • 4/5

      Sep 25, 2022

      In the first half of this dual-timeline, thought-provoking story I loved how the author combined a wonderfully nuanced portrayal of the friendship between Zahra and Maryam with how the start of their journey towards adulthood was taking place against the background of the political and social change which was erupting in Pakistan in 1988. The evocative clarity of Shamsie’s observations enabled me to feel that I was inhabiting their inner-worlds, sharing not only their all too recognisable adolescent concerns about their changing bodies, their relationships with boys, love of pop music, the stress of exams etc, but also their expectations and dreams of what their futures would hold and their total conviction that, whatever happened, their cherished friendship would remain a constant. Having grown up under the fearful dictatorship of General Zia, his death, followed by the election of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, offers both girls the hope that anything will now be possible for them, that they will no longer have to feel fearful just for being a woman. However, their nascent hopes are soon shattered by a shocking and frightening incident following a party, one which not only exposes their vulnerability as young women but, in its aftermath, shifts the dynamic of their relationship. As a result of that incident Maryam is sent to an English boarding school to complete her education, leaving Zahra in Karachi to continue hers. The girls are confident their friendship is so strong and special enough to survive any separation … but will it? As the reader discovers when the timeline of the story abruptly moves forwards three decades, it does but it soon becomes clear that repercussions from the fateful evening have continued to echo down the decades, shaping their futures and, ultimately, affecting the nature and balance of their relationship.
      The second half of the story is set in 2019 in London. Both women have become highly-successful in their chosen careers, albeit operating at different ends of the political and social spectrum, with Maryam operating as a venture capitalist whilst Zahra has become a human rights lawyer and is now the director of the Centre for Civil Liberties. Their different trajectories enabled the author to explore the complexities of a wide range of themes, including contemporary political, social and racial issues, experiences of being an immigrant, abuse of power, misogyny, patriarchy, as well as the changing nature of Maryam and Zahra’s abiding friendship and their different perceptions of their shared history. Although I found many aspects of this second half of the story interesting and thought-provoking, it seldom felt quite as emotionally engaging as the sense of intimacy which I felt reading the first half. However, I think the author’s portrayal of the characters’ reactions, and interactions, when ‘ghosts’ from the past reappear in their lives, finally forcing them, as they spend New Year’s Eve 2019 together, to confront unpalatable truths about that fateful night in Karachi, was both masterful and devastating … and the ambiguity of the ending felt perfect!
    • 4/5

      Jul 31, 2022

      Small and circumscribed in focus, but brilliantly focused. Written with seemingly effortless ease, rounding out different characters with authorial insights and conjuring up an unknown country.
      The story starts in 1988, skilfully placed by apposite mention of pop musicians (making it familiar for me), whilst locating the story in an unfamiliar place (Karachi), with the weather and politics. I know this sounds as if I am analysing the text, but this arises from admiration of the facility with which this is achieved. Maryam and Zahra are 14 and best friends, going to the same school, although Maryam is from a well off background, whereas Zahra’s parents are professionals. Personalities and place are all deftly described, with the first half of the book moving forward to a satisfying turning point.
      We then move to London in 2019 with both Maryam and Zahra having achieved professional success and Maryam a contented home life. Again, this updating of their story is deftly and effortlessly achieved.
      The story reaches its denouement, climaxing with no black and white answers, but rich storytelling.

      I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.