Why modern fiction has turned its back on friendship | Books | The Guardian

That friendships between adults are harder to rationalise than other close relationships may be one reason they are underrepresented in modern fiction, considering their importance in most people’s lives. Film loves friendships, as does television, as the cops and cowboys in buddy movies and series from Butch Cassidy to Cagney and Lacey and Thelma and Louise attest. So do children’s stories, perhaps because, along with the separation from parents with which they coincide, the making and breaking of friendships are among childhood’s first dramas. Think of the beautiful triangle of Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin and Piglet. Nineteenth-century authors, especially the Americans, followed friendships across oceans and frontiers; Jane Austen chronicled their tensions and microcrises.