Close Female Friendships

The two longest essays in this collection, "Cousins" and "The Boys of My Youth," both focus deeply on Jo's close female friendships, with, respectively, Wendell and Elizabeth. While Wendell and Jo are cousins, there is an element to their relationship that is undeniably friend-based, as they do not simply visit with each other at family functions, but do things like go and dance at bars together. In both essays, Jo as the author displays the depth of both friendships by consistently bouncing back and forth between scenes involving the friends and children, and scenes involving Jo and her friends as grown adults.

Jo's friendships to both Wendell and Elizabeth are both depicted showing a sly sense of humor that they use around each other. This is contrast to, for instance, openly and verbosely sharing about how much they value each other. For instance, when...