Best of Friends

I found the depiction of life in Karachi in the late 1980s for the two teenage best friends fascinating and eye-opening. The first part of the book is set during the military rule of General Zia and the time shortly after his death when the prospect of a more liberal society seems to emerge. I found the character of confident, entitled Maryam the most engaging - particularly her relationship with her patriarchal grandfather - and studious Zahra a little less so, but it is outwardly serious Zahra who sets the novel’s key plot events in action. The novel is good on the intensity of best friendship between teenage girls and how this can veer from love to if not hate, then definitely distrust and dislike. A good read.

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Like many of the other reviewers, I found this book started well but then got a bit lost. The Pakistan part was refreshing, interesting and easy to understand. Once it moved to England I was very disappointed as I found it confusing, tedious and fairly boring. Had it been the other way round I would probably have given it a higher star rating, but ending on a note of disappointment and frustration was not the best of ways to finish.

The book opens in 1988. Maryam and Zahra both attend an exclusive school for the wealthy and privileged in Karachi, Pakistan and they are best friends. But wealth and privilege are relative and within these constraints, the two girls are at opposite ends of the scale – Maryam is at the top of the tree and Zahra is languishing somewhere near the other end. Despite this they are inseparable, sharing everything with each other and spending all their time together. The second half of the book is set in 2019. Maryam and Zahra are both living in London and are each very successful and influential in their own specialised fields. They are still close friends but when the past meets the present their friendship is tested to the limit.

I loved the first half of this novel, set in Pakistan. Although I have visited the country I did not really get a feel for the minutiae of everyday life and it was fascinating to see how teenagers, albeit very fortunate ones, lived their daily lives both at home and in a mixed school, in a country dominated by Muslim doctrines. The friendship between Maryam and Zahra was innocent and simple and made perfect sense - it was also depicted very well in the novel.

However, I didn’t think the second half, set in England, was entirely successful. Whilst the characters were credible as children I thought they were less convincing as adults. I also thought the storyline became very convoluted and complicated, so much so that I’m not sure I actually understood all the complex ins and outs of either their jobs, their relationship with each other or the situation which arose to test their friendship.

Kamila Shamsie is an established author and I would certainly consider reading more of her work in the future. Although I had some issues with this particular book, she writes well and has some interesting ideas.

I read Kamlila Shamsie’s new novel, Best of Friends, with Gloucester Book Club, grateful to be included in the Reading Agency’s offer of a free copy in return for an honest review.

This is the long-awaited new novel by the author of the much-feted Home Fire, winner of the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. But, sadly, there is none of the verve, tension and socio-political prescience of the earlier work here: Best of Friends is, to put it bluntly, a disappointment.

Best of Friends is, essentially, a coming-of-age novel about two Pakistani girls, best friends Zahra and Maryam. The first half concerns their childhood and teenage years, being brought-up in privilege in Karachi, until a night out goes wrong and the courses of their lives change. This section of the story is relatively tedious and little more than a fairly standard High School melodrama overlaid on a fairly strict Pakistani family and cultural backdrop. The second half finds the girls as women of 40-ish, high fliers living and working in London, moving largely in the same circle, a sort of “ex-pat” Pakistani community that includes many of their families and some old friends from Karachi. Zahra and Maryam remain best friends on the surface, but, as this section progresses, there are signs of possible hidden tensions, an unwelcome confrontation with the past and the discovery of a betrayal from the friends’ “Karachi years” that threatens to destroy their friendship. We are not told explicitly how things end between them and are left to form our own opinions.

I’m afraid this novel just wasn’t for me: compared to Home Fire, a damp squib!

A novel based on 2 friends and a life long friendship and how they each navigate through life with all its complexities.
The first part of the book covers their childhood and families while growing up in Pakistan, the second half about adulthood and life in London.
I must say though that towards the end of the book I felt the story ran out of steam.
Overall a good read.

Read with Gloucester Book Club, thanks to the publisher and The Reading Agency for supplying copies for us to read and review.

Sadly this novel didn’t work for me. After having read and loved ‘Home Fire’, which deservedly won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018, Best of Friends was a disappointment.

I found it hard to believe that one frightening incident in their privileged teenage years in Karachi has been so traumatic to them that as adults it became the single most important thing that triggers such powerful revenge.

In their adult years, both living in London, the scenes often seem superficial, even implausible, such as the revenge plot hatched at Chequers.
Yet, the characters had so much potential, and the reader witnesses the reveal of many undercover emotions that exist between Zahra and Maryam. Unfortunately the potential was never realised. I couldn’t work out why they had remained such close friends for so long since there were clearly deeply embedded differences and cracks in their friendship.

The most convincing and emotional scenes for me were those set at the UK refugee detention centre but sadly they were fleeting and not central to the plot.

The classical foundations of ‘Home Fire’ worked so much better. This one felt underwhelming, shallow and overly contrived.

A book split in two about the lives of two friends growing up in Pakistan. The first half of the book covers their childhood and family until in their early teens and then the second half is about their lives in London when at the top of their career and their continuing relationship.
I found I disliked the two main characters so had problems enjoying the book. The friendship between Zahra and Maryam was interesting and well written so easy to read but I was desperate to get to the end of the book

I found Best of Friends easy to read and enjoyable. It is a story of female friendship and how it endures over the years and how events and choices from their past can have repercussions many years later. Well written with great characterisation, I think this book would appeal to women of all ages. I will definitely be more of Kamila Shamsie’s books.

A thought-provoking novel about two girls growing up in Karachi, then continuing their friendship (and ideological disagreements) as adults in London. While other reviewers seem to dislike the very "two halves" feel of the novel, I appreciated getting to see the characters in two distinct situations, split by one particularly traumatic incident that transformed their lives. Personally, I preferred the second half, which wrestled more with some of the political and moral questions the girls faced. The novel offers plenty to think about, but it poses these questions through character conflict and development, not through political digressions.

Another aspect of the novel I loved is that here we get a story about two brown girls, where race and femininity is an integral part of the story, but where the real heart of things is their friendship. It's eye-opening to read about characters whose cultural background is so different than mine, but where the challenges of a decades-old friendship are so relatable.

There were definitely elements of the story that didn't work for me-- I felt the first half dragged a little, and the central traumatising incident didn't seem quite as big a deal as the characters claimed it was-- but overall I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys stories about complicated friendships.

I enjoyed this vivid and realistic portrayal of the evolving relationship between two ‘best friends’. From small girls in the playground, to teenagers testing their limits, to women at the top of their careers, I believed in these characters and the complicated but deep bond between them. This is not just a book about friendship though, it also explores the nature of fear, power and ambition. Both characters have moral struggles, both have flaws, and how they navigate their paths to power proves to be the ultimate test of their relationship. In light of that, I found the ending of the book quietly hopeful and I think the cover illustration is very apt for these final scenes. I would read more by this author as I would like to see how she tackles other relationships and storylines.
V Ryrie
Hunstanworth Village Hall Book Club

I really enjoyed the first half of the book which follows the life’s of two school friends living in Pakistan. The second half of the novel moves on to their adult friendship which now finds them both living in London. They both have successful careers and have remained a strong bond with each other. However this half I found far less engaging and enjoyable. I would however try another one of the authors books, this one was just not for me.

Zahra and Maryam were friends from a very young age, brought up in Karachi. The book begins with them aged 14, both from different family backgrounds and with different ambitions for the future, but still the ‘best of friends’. I actually started to think this was a YA novel when I was reading this first ‘half’, about the girls’ lives and friendship in 1988. This is maybe because it brought that whole teenage stage to life so well. There is a key event that happens then, all down to teenage curiosity and impulsiveness, which changes Maryam’s path in particular. It taught them a lot about themselves and each other, but they did not have the maturity to examine and understand that insight at the time.
Fast forward 30 years and the two women are very successful in completely different fields and still steadfast friends. We are out of YA territory now, and it seems the emphasis on the event in 1988 was very much a scene setter. They have clearly different values and we start to wonder whether they remain the ‘best of friends’ because they always have been? The emergence of two men from their past in Karachi brings the previous event back to the forefront, and this stretches their friendship to breaking point.
There was a strong political theme throughout the book, particularly around the relationship between power and principles, and the subplot about immigration and detention 2019 London was really thought-provoking.
I would recommend this as an absorbing but quick and entertaining read.

I'm torn with this one. I was quite enjoying it, quite engrossed and I kind of stopped for a few hours for my birthday and found it quite difficult to get back into afterwards but I can't say why. I really had to force myself to carry on, yet as I say I'm stumped as to why. It simply didn't sustain me in the end.

This is very much a book of two halves. I really enjoyed the first half about the girls growing up in Karachi during momentous historical events. I thought the second half was very different in writing style. I didn’t like the main (adult) two characters and the story lost itself in the telling. A shame as I started the book with high hopes.

Best of Friends starts with fourteen year old best friends Zahra and Maryam in Pakistan, and then we see them in present day London, where both are successful in different fields. They are still best friends, with the kind of deep friendship which comes from knowing the other intimately and in the context of the families which produced them. They are such friends still that Zahra's parents say that when one dies the other parent will call Maryam because she will drop everything and book two plane tickets beacuse she wouldn't let Zahra make the journey back to Karachi alone. But a bad decision when they are 14 has repercussions in the present. Will their seemingly unbreakable friendship survive? A wonderful read about friendship, being female, moral questions, which leaves you wantig to stay in the lives of these characters after the book has ended.

How many of us are still in contact with old school and childhood friends? I suspect a growing number given the power and each of social media. My own daughter, now 35, still regularly socialises and maintains close and lasting relationships with the women we both first knew as toddlers. But would we choose these same people to be our close friends should we meet them in later life? We may have shared childhood, school and family experiences but our lives may have taken us on very different paths and with consequent varied outlooks, ideologies, attitudes, opinions and political persuasions. Perhaps even in childhood our family backgrounds were so different that our friendships were more a product of circumstance than real affinity? That is perhaps the premise of this latest novel by award winning Pakistani born author Kamila Shamsie.

This book of two halves was for me most interesting when Maryam and Zahra, our 14 year old protagonists in the first half set in Karachi in the late 1980s with the demise of the dictatorship regime, were followed in their early 40s as successful, influential women in London some 30 years later. I found the first half, which read at times like a poor YA novel, over lengthy and it implied some assumption and prior knowledge of Pakistan politics, which I then went on to research. Presumably much of this was based on Shamsie’s own family experiences growing up Anglo-Pakistani in Karachi - references to cricket, the patriarchy, the oppression and relative powerlessness of women (Girl Fear), life under a dictatorship, corruption, bribery, military rule, female oppression, and new hope and possibilities with the democratic election of a female President, alongside the typical interests, sexual awakening and puberty of teenage girls the world over with their focus on pop music, films, fashion and boys. Undoubtedly both girls grew up in affluent, privileged, educated and relatively liberated households - perhaps a side of many Asian countries we seldom read about in contemporary fiction. This first half climaxes with a pivotal key traumatic incident on which the whole book depends although reading it this also seemed over lengthy rather than of significance at the time.Throughout however the trust, love and friendship of the two girls survives - they are bonded together and loyal to each other despite their differences in character, family background and beliefs.

For me thought the book really took off with Maryam and Zahra as successful, high profile career women living in London. Although we see Maryam as something of the privileged, spoilt, vengeful and ultimately ruthless “operator” and successful business woman she is the one with the successful home life, and family relationships as mother to Zola and in her love for Layla. Her ambition though, which leads her to join the influential right wing Top Table fundraising organisation and succeed in manipulating political decision making, shows just how ruthless and vengeful she ultimately has become - very much in the same mould as her grandfather. Zahra has been unsuccessful in her romantic relationships - a risk taking teenager who then sought out similar experiences as a university student, and now lives something of a celebrity lifestyle as CEO of a Civil Rights lobby group, with her defence of civil rights, personal freedoms, and her support of migrant cases. I read the book in the week of an inquest relating to the tragic suicide of a teenage girl who was subject to online bullying - one of many such recent horrific cases and the case featured in the story seemed even more pertinent and poignant.

I enjoyed the book’s relevance to several such current socio-political issues - conflict between tech and personal liberties, attacks on civil liberties, insidious intrusion of technology into our personal lives, debate over the introduction of ID cards, facial recognition technology, police intrusion, privacy laws, horrendous treatment of asylum seekers and detainees but none of these were explored in any real depth. I did find the continual use of cultural references at times annoying and wonder if these will date the book in time despite the author presumably using them to set the story in a definite time period, place and context. I didn't really warm to any of the protagonists - both women and their friends and families were so very privileged from the outset and continued to live in an elite world with which I could not identify or have much in common. I found the writing style at times clunky and very much a case of telling rather than showing particularly in the first half. I ended up having little sympathy for either Maryam or Zahra nor did I ultimately like either of them very much. I had hoped that the story might develop into an exploration of racism, attitudes towards and the role of women in a patriarchal society, and Muslim women in particular but maybe this wasn’t the book Shamsie wanted to write? Too much of a cliche?

However I did find the final climactic confrontational scene between the two friends riveting and powerful as it pulled together all the strands of the story. The revelations, personal attacks on each other’s behaviour and character were fascinating .This was the story of two educated, successful, privileged, middle class, affluent career women and their relationship and how perhaps ultimately questions of morality trump these historic emotional friendship ties. Did I care very much though…….?

With thanks to The Reading Agency, Reading Groups for Everyone and Bloomsbury Press for sending copies to myself and other Hythe Book Group members.