{"id":144650,"date":"2021-06-21T12:29:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T01:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=144650"},"modified":"2021-06-22T10:24:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T23:24:31","slug":"anne-buist-how-far-would-you-go-for-your-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2021\/06\/21\/anne-buist-how-far-would-you-go-for-your-best-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Anne Buist: How far would you go for your best friend?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Anne<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Anne Buist is co-author with Graeme Simsion of Two Steps Forward and the sequel, Two Steps Onward<\/a><\/strong>, and author of Medea\u2019s Curse, Dangerous to Know, This I Would Kill For and The Long Shadow.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Anne Buist is on the blog to share about Two Steps Onward and the importance of tending to our most enduring friendships. Read on …<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n
\"Anne<\/a>

Anne Buist (Photo by Lachlan Woods)<\/p><\/div>\n

How far would you go for your best friend?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In these times of COVID we are reminded constantly to take care of our mental health: and good mental health, researchers have been telling us for years, is tied closely to the quality of our relationships. While the romantic relationship may be front and centre in our twenties and thirties, in mid and later life, enduring friendships can become equally or more important. In Two Steps Onward<\/em>, the new book I co-authored with my partner Graeme Simsion, Zoe and Camille\u2019s odd but enduring friendship was always going to be important, but it became central. It gave us an opportunity to see if you can sort out a friendship based on misunderstanding, and where a very polarising issue divides them.<\/p>\n\n\n

For women, other women are there in our lives from childhood when we compare how we look and try to survive high school cliques. Next we hit the dating scene huddled in high heels and bare legs (well that\u2019s today\u2019s women, I had tights on) and before we know it find ourselves in a mothers\u2019 groups (think Big Little Lies<\/a><\/strong><\/em>). After that its book clubs (often with wine\u2026). From The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood<\/a><\/strong><\/em> to Thelma and Louise<\/em>, friendships between women are great material for fiction. Elena\u2019s Ferrante\u2019s Neapolitan novels<\/a><\/strong> are rich in culture, history and growing up\u2014but her depictions of the power of female friendship are what took my breath away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I meet regularly with three girlfriends, two of whom I have known since I was aged eight\u201415 years longer than I have known my partner. The third, added from mothers\u2019 groups days, was a beta reader of Two Steps Forward<\/em>, and inspired by it, took off to walk the Camino solo to reflect on her own life\u2014she was back, reborn, before the book was even published. The four of us recently travelled the Victorian Silos together \u2026 by car (two couldn\u2019t be convinced to don backpacks) but we all partook of the wine and cocktails, and the conversation and laughter that ensued. We have yet to settle on which of us is which of the complex women depicted in Charlotte Wood\u2019s The Weekend<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This last book perhaps highlights one of the issues of later life \u2026 the loss of those friendships as we age. In retrospect, in my thirties I was a little careless with friendships; life kept getting in the way of making a phone call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Camino-walking friend was a product of the child connection so we had that to join us together through rough patches (That \u201cOMG you won\u2019t believe what my daughter did \u2026 what do I do?\u201d captured so well in chick lit\u2014I do my own version in The Long Shadow<\/a><\/strong><\/em>). But the friendships with the other two survived our twenties with sparse contact (one was studying music in the UK, and I was going through a marriage breakup with the complications of friends in common) and has gone from strength to strength. They all jumped on a plane and turned up (in Venetian face masks) in France to surprise me for my 50th birthday (I nearly died of shock\u2014who were these weird people sitting on my lounge?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘While the romantic relationship may be front and centre in our twenties and thirties, in mid and later life, enduring friendships can become equally or more important.’<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t imagine my life without them. When Graeme and I were on the radio about Two Steps Onwards<\/em> and highlighting its theme of female friendships, one listener texted in that it as her girlfriends that had helped her survive her divorce. My group have had all sorts of crises and yes, we\u2019re there to get it each other through them. Yet we are in many ways different \u2014 a single classic musician devoted to her craft and with a wicked sense of humour, a happily divorced passionate environmentalist (who wants to get us camping but to get our musician on a bike we had to say it was only a kilometre or two and 20 later she was committed \u2026 for camping we\u2019d have to fudge a car breakdown, a bridge too far) and a warm vibrant Indigenous art enthusiast who steadies us all \u2014 and then me, academic, thriller writer (who also penned some erotica), committed to growing old disgracefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secret of our success? Embracing the difference and trying to make sense of it. Give and take. And always \u2014 perspective and a sense of humour. I knew each of their mothers well and have travelled with all three through the loss of the matriarch; so too do I expect (hope) to be with my girlfriends as we face old age together and our own demise, as do the characters in Wood\u2019s The Weekend<\/em>. Incidentally, this book, the Ya-Ya sisters and Ferrante\u2019s novels have been among our favourites handed between each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Two Steps Onward<\/em>, I hope that it inspires our readers to think of how it relates to issues from their own lives, and that perhaps it can help them see the other person\u2019s point of view. Ultimately we gave Zoe a choice we want our readers to consider: if you had to choose between supporting a terminally ill life-long friend and a new romantic interest, which would you choose? In the process, you can also enjoy some armchair travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Two Steps Onward<\/a><\/em> by Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion (Text Publishing) is out now.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest blog with the co-author of Two Steps Onward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":144656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[8004,715,723,1974,2303,5210,8070,13123],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/AnneBuist-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144650"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144756,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144650\/revisions\/144756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}