BFF, Christie Tate
BFF, Christie Tate
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

BFF
A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found

Author: Christie Tate

Narrator: Christie Tate

Unabridged: 9 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/07/2023


Synopsis

* “A love story about the miracle of friendship.” —Maggie Smith * “Fearless and unflinching.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette *

From the author of Group, a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club Pick, a poignant, funny, and emotionally satisfying memoir about Christie Tate’s lifelong struggle to sustain female friendship, and the extraordinary friend who changed everything.

After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won’t commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.

Or so she thought. Weeks after giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift from a friend. Meredith, twenty years older and always impeccably accessorized, gives Christie a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. “The work never ends, right?” she says with a wink.

Christie isn’t so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of “apartness” that has plagued her since childhood isn’t magically going away now that she’s in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach—and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon.

“An outstanding portrait of self-excavation” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), BFF explores what happens when we finally break the habits that impair our ability to connect with others, and the ways that one life—however messy and imperfect—can change another.

About Christie Tate

Christie Tate is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese’s Book Club selection. She has been published in The New York TimesThe Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere, and she lives in Chicago with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tess

Have you ever read a memoir by someone that was so radically different than you? And who you wouldn’t really want to spend time with? Christie Tate, in her upcoming book called BFF, describes her tumultuous experience of friendships with women. And, to be honest, reading it made me feel awful. Tate’......more

Goodreads review by Jessica

I won't lie, a memoir about friendship sounds trite. It sounds like it's going to be all warmth and inspiration. It sounds like the kind of book I would walk right past. I say this even though friendship is something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about and working on. The difficulty of it, the......more

3.5 stars I’m interested in people writing honestly about friendship and its challenges, and Tate is a good writer—this book is very quick and easy to read. It’s soul-baring, as the author confronts her failures as a friend from childhood through her 40s, but also generally hopeful, as she finds grea......more

Several years ago, Christie Tate published Group, a memoir about her therapist and support group … and she is back with B.F.F. a memoir of Friendship Lost and Found. A writer experienced in diving deep into messy situations, and growing up with a difficult family life and an eating disorder, Tate is......more

Goodreads review by Zibby

In this memoir, the author discusses how she lacked healthy and deep relationships. Until she met Meredith, Meredith was 20 years older and wanted to show the author what a true friendship could look like if she dealt with her issues. The book focuses on how that friendship helped her unpack all her......more


Quotes

"Christie Tate uses self-deprecating humor as she narrates her unique memoir. It’s a recovery story mixed with a meditation on adult womanhood and an ode to grief and loss. Listeners will laugh, and maybe cry, at her honesty. Tate is unflinchingly in the measure of herself — and everyone else — in her pursuit of healthy adult relationships. Fans of the memoir genre will fall in love with her quirky, frank retelling of aspects of her life such as her attendance of AA meetings and the loss of a dear friend. She is the best kind of narrator, one who has experienced the material firsthand, written it, and delivers it in a way that is seasoned by these experiences. Irreverent and at times sad, this audiobook takes us on her journey."