My friend had trained up the Hudson for a visit. We talked and ate and hung out and took my kid to the fire truck museum and bribed him with Elmo on the iPhone while we spent an hour in the best vintage shop. I told her about the fiction-thing I’m working on, about the impossibilities of female friendship. She told me about the Heti book. And as we sat on my couch under a new, still hopeful ficus tree, smoking a joint, I felt convinced that female friendship is perhaps not so difficult after all. I needed to read the Heti. Maybe my novel would have a happy ending.

“HSAPB” was finally published in the U.S. in June (see this link for the long story of how and why publishers can be so terrifically dumb), and to a rapturous reception. It’s a literary home run, and rightly so. All the smart girls are talking about it, which is exciting, because one doesn’t come across books like this very often. It’s about women who fall in love with each other’s minds. It’s about women’s efforts at becoming creatively liberated. It’s a big old breath of fresh air. It’s candid and deadpan and plays with the whole idea of a novel in interesting ways. What is a novel? Where do novels come from?

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