Friday Nights

It’s Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women with small children – separate, struggling and plainly lonely – and decides to ask them in and see what happens.

What happens is that a group gradually forms of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women.

All of them, variously, value Friday nights.

And then one of them meets a man – an enigmatic, significant man – and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested – and some of them break.

With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern female friendship.