The Virago Book of Friendship
EDITED BY RACHEL COOKE
VIRAGO, 400 PP, £18.99
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £17.09 • TEL 020 7799 4064
THE EARLIEST example of female friendship comes from the Book of Ruth. Naomi, widowed and with both sons now dead, begs her daughter-in-law to return to her own people, but Ruth so loves Naomi that she steadfastly refuses to leave the older woman: through great sadness, they have become inseparable. Skip 3,000 years and here is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, setting off on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Becket, and leaving her best friend, her “gossip” Alisoun, to report every misdemeanour her fifth husband may be plotting in her absence.
