Friends and Strangers

hour-long class about breastfeeding. The entire time, Elisabeth kept falling asleep, waking when her head slammed against the wall behind her.

She held her phone aloft in one hand now, above the baby s head, and used her thumb to navigate to Facebook. Straight to the BK Mamas page, as usual. Elisabeth scrolled until she came to the place where she d left off before bed. The page buzzed with questions from mothers at all hours. They kept one another company there. She imagined the rows of brownstones in the old neighborhood, bathed in blackness but for the tiny screens, lit up, connecting them all.

There was a post from a woman looking for tips on flying cross-country with a toddler. Elisabeth read all thirteen responses with interest, even though she didn t have a toddler or plans to fly anytime soon. Someone was asking about the flu shot. Someone else needed a unicorn birthday cake on short notice. Mimi Winchester, who had recently purchased a townhouse for three million, was selling a used boy s coat, size 2T, for nine dollars.

Elisabeth had once mocked women like this women who graduated from prestigious universities and excelled in their chosen fields, only to be felled by the prospect of clipping a newborn s fingernails. Now they were her survival. The only people alive who cared about the exact things she did at this moment, with as much intensity, the people with all the answers. They were learning an evolving language, one you spoke for a week or two before everything changed again. What else to do with that accrued knowledge but share it. Someone with a child six weeks older than hers was a prophet.

She switched sides after ten minutes.

A new post popped up.

Slightly off topic, but . . . last month, as usual, my husband was a no-show on a visit to my parents in Minneapolis. While I was there, I ran into my colleg

a little bit like a beach read, but at the same time tackles themes of acceptance of others and also of yourself... The novel takes on modern issues surrounding adulthood, motherhood and class. It also offers a broader look at issues we are facing as an American society...  as hilarious as it is insightful and paints an authentic picture of modern motherhood and the power of female friendship."
Today

What's crucial about... Friends and Strangers, though, is that they are more than "nanny novels" predicated on a Manichaean dynamic between employer and employee. They expertly lay bare the shortcomings of the employers they represent, but they allow them humanity too: These mothers are lost, isolated and often have no one else to whom they feel they can turn other than their nannies. More importantly, while these books center the young women who have been transported into unfamiliar and luxe surroundings under the auspices of caregiving, they take care to define their protagonists by more than their work.
Vogue

"Courtney Sullivan s new Friends and Strangers... fits neatly into my preferred category of summer reading: literate and smart, but also a heck of a lot of fun and a break for my news-addled brain... a gimlet-eyed examination of classism and privilege in America and a close look at the complicated terrain between parents and hired caregivers, with the ensuing guilt and resentments that so often accompany such relationships."
Portland Monthly

"Extremely timely."
New York Post

"One of summer's most delicious reads."
Town and Country

"A hilarious and insightful novel about a complicated friendship between two very different women... When their differences are revealed, a betrayal takes place with devastating consequences."
SheReads

"You ll like this one...  a modern look at power dynamics, privilege, and motherhood, and is one you ll be seeing all over Insta."
  TheSkimm

"The clash between rich and poor animates Friends and Strangers, J. Courtney Sullivan s quietly perceptive new novel about two women on different sides of America s economic divide: a new mother and the college-age nanny she hires for her son... Friends and Strangers is at its best when Sullivan emphasizes the widening class difference in America between people who can afford $46 peony-scented hand soaps and those worried about meeting basic needs. Sullivan dares to further complicate her narrative by showing that financial security doesn t guarantee happiness. The result is a poignant look at the biases of modern society."
BookPage

"Sullivan s writing is captivating and witty as the characters observe the disconnects in their respective lives and those around them."
New Canaan Advertiser

"Courtney Sullivan's Friends and Strangers exposes fraught truths about power dynamics, class, and privilege."
Marie Claire

"This new novel from the author of Saints for All Occasions looks at how our locations, both geographic and where we are in life, can take their toll, and delivers what promises to be one of summer's most delicious reads.
Town and Country

"Sullivan... once again displays her keen observation skills with this insightful examination of two women at very different places in their lives. With well-developed, very real-feeling characters the story moves seamlessly from one perspective to the other. Friends and Strangers is a deeply personal yet profound exploration of motherhood, friendships, and the role of privilege in determining how we shape our lives."
Booklist

"Readers should jettison any expectation they have for the book--fish-out-of-water story, manipulative-nanny chiller, send-up of campus culture. J. Courtney Sullivan's fifth novel offers something more interesting... Friends and Strangers is about whether the unfairness of privilege can ever be sufficiently offset by good deeds. And what of bad deeds: Are they forgiven if they result from good intentions?... . Sullivan massages her themes in scenes as barbed as they are funny, by way of characters as infuriating as they are heartbreaking."
Shelf Awareness

"Sullivan... writes with empathy for her characters even as she reveals their flaws and shortcomings. And while the story she tells focuses primarily on two women from different backgrounds and at different stages of life, it also illuminates broader issues about money, privilege, and class; marriage, family, and friendship; and the dueling demands of career and domesticity with which many women struggle. This perceptive novel about a complex friendship between two women resonates as broadly as it does deeply."
Kirkus, starred

"Sullivan s intimate, incisive latest explores the evolving friendship between a new mother and her babysitter... Readers will be captivated by Sullivan s authentic portrait of modern motherhood."
Publishers Weekly

Friends and Strangers is a smart and deeply compelling exploration of female friendship and the complicated politics of motherhood and childcare. J. Courtney Sullivan is a shrewd and sympathetic observer of our current cultural moment, with an unerring eye for the way that the unspoken realities of money and class can affect even our most intimate relationships.
Tom Perrotta, best-selling author of The Leftovers  

J. Courtney Sullivan is one of our great literary treasures, and Friends and Strangers is permeated with her brilliance and heart. The novel is a captivating, wise, laugh-out-loud-funny story about the life-changing friendship between Elisabeth, a new mom, and Sam, her college-age babysitter. I loved this novel from the first word to the last."
Ann Napolitano, best-selling author of Dear Edward

I have long been a fan of J. Courtney Sullivan's insightful and rich novels Friends and Strangers is her best yet! Sullivan has a stunning ability to capture the tenderness and frailty of human relationships. Her newest is a poignant, wise, big-hearted novel full of complicated women doing their best and striving to do better. I loved it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid, best-selling author of Daisy Jones & The Six

J. Courtney Sullivan is a writer of extraordinary gifts, and this is her most affecting book yet, which I just wanted to keep reading and reading straight through to its climactic and emotional last pages, because its world felt completely realized, and completely real. Sullivan is a writer who offers up small human moments and large social ones, all within the frame of a truly good story. I loved it.
Meg Wolitzer, best-selling author of The Female Persuasion