Friendship is underrepresented in serious fiction relative to romance and family, which is strange given that for many people it is the central relationship of their lives. The books below were chosen because they treat friendship as the novel’s primary subject rather than as context for something else — novels where what the friends are to each other is the whole point, with the same complexity and the same refusal to resolve easily that the best love stories bring to their subject.

Friendships built across a lifetime

A Little Life cover
A Little LifeHanya YanagiharaThe most serious fictional treatment of male friendship in recent literature — four men from college through middle age, and the love between them that is as real and as demanding as any romantic relationship. Yanagihara insists that the friendships are the novel’s primary subject, and the emotional weight comes from how completely she earns that insistence.
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow cover
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowGabrielle ZevinA thirty-year creative partnership that neither person can categorise — Zevin’s novel is about the specific bond between people who make things together, which is one of the most intense and least described kinds of friendship. The love is real, the friendship is real, and the novel refuses to resolve the tension between them.
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The best books about friendship treat it as the novel’s primary relationship — as complex, sustaining, and capable of devastation as any other bond. That seriousness is what most fiction about friendship fails to achieve.

Friendships forged through shared darkness

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The Secret HistoryDonna TarttA group of students whose bond is forged through shared darkness and maintained through shared guilt — Tartt understands that some friendships are based not on mutual benefit but on mutual complicity, and that this makes them no less binding or no less real. The most morally complicated friendship novel in the catalogue.
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The Kite Runner cover
The Kite RunnerKhaled HosseiniA friendship defined by a betrayal — Hosseini examines what happens to a bond when one person fails the other completely, and whether the friendship survives in any form the decades of guilt and the attempt at repair. The most emotionally direct novel on this list about the specific damage that failing a friend produces.
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Friendships between women

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Conversations with FriendsSally RooneyThe friendship between Frances and Bobbi is the novel’s emotional centre even as the romantic entanglement takes up more narrative space — Rooney writes what two women owe each other, how loyalty and desire complicate the same relationship, with the same precision she brings to everything she examines.
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A Thousand Splendid Suns cover
A Thousand Splendid SunsKhaled HosseiniTwo women bound together by circumstances neither chose who find in each other the only reliable love available to them — Hosseini writes female solidarity under impossible conditions with the same emotional directness he brings to male friendship in The Kite Runner, and the bond between Mariam and Laila is one of the most moving in contemporary fiction.
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Who this is for

This list is for readers who want fiction that takes friendship as seriously as the best novels take romantic love. Start with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow for the most accessible. A Little Life for the most serious. The Secret History for the most morally complex. Browse literary fiction and contemporary fiction for more.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What are the best novels about friendship? A: A Little Life by Yanagihara is the most serious treatment of male friendship in recent fiction. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the most accessible and warm. The Secret History is the most morally complex. Each takes the bond between friends as seriously as most novels take romance.

Q: What books about friendship are also emotionally intense? A: A Little Life is the most emotionally demanding. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the most emotionally direct about what friendship means under impossible conditions. The Kite Runner is the most intense about what betraying a friend costs.

Q: Are there books specifically about female friendship? A: Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Hosseini, and Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty all centre female bonds. The first is the most psychologically precise; the second is the most emotionally overwhelming; the third is the most socially acute.

Q: What books about friendship have the most hopeful ending? A: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow arrives at something warm and sustainable despite the losses along the way. The Thursday Murder Club is built around a found friendship and is consistently warm throughout.

Not sure which of these is right for you specifically? The Pagesmith quiz matches you to books based on your mood, pacing preference, and reading goals — not bestseller lists. Takes two minutes.

Topics Reading TipsLiterary Fiction