Book Review – Brand New Friend

That’s what I added to my review page. I have a little more to say about it though… don’t worry it won’t contain any major spoilers.

I found this book quite difficult to read for the first half, which made me feel as though I sort of didn’t like it… mainly because of how it made me feel. The story is about a guy named Rob who is given an ultimatum by his girlfriend. Move to be with her or break up, he chooses to move… even though he’s put it off a long time because he didn’t want to leave the group of friends he spends most of his time with.

After he moves, he’s working from home and his gf is working a lot (she’s a doctor). He’s lonely and depressed, he misses his friends and he thinks about how difficult it is to make friends when you are in your 30’s because mostly everyone around you already has a well established group of friends. He goes through a period of ‘man-dates’ where he meets up with other guys who are new to the area through an ad his gf puts in a paper for him (much to his dismay, because he thinks it’s a very gay thing to do)… and he quickly realizes that meeting friends in this way doesn’t work either because in the end the only thing you often have in common with these people is that neither of you knows anyone else and are new to the area.

I laid there reading and going pffttt a bit. The guy in the book moved from London to Manchester in the UK…. a mere few hours drive. Same culture (basically), same language, same country, etc.

When I finished the book, I did truly love it… because the story is great and the characters are so real and you almost feel like you really know them.

Also, after thinking about it, the whole homesickness / moving is the shits theme to the book made me feel better in a way. I mean if Mike Gayle can write a book about a guy who moves like 2 hours away and feels like life as he knew it was over… then it must be ok for me to feel the way I do having moved to an entirely new continent, with a new language, new culture and very few friends / family to speak of… even after almost 7 years. Right?

Anyway, the book isn’t as depressing as I seem to make it sound haha It’s really really good. I’m definately going to be reading it again, forcing it on my friends and buying it for people for x-mas.

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