The best friend, or unfortunate lack there of
Everybody knows the power of their best friends; the people who are there when you’re in tears and need a shoulder to cry on, or when you’re bursting to overexcitedly share some news, when you can’t wait to gossip deliciously about some mutual acquaintance, or when all you want to do is sit and eat Ben & Jerry’s, watching a film in your pyjamas, last night’s makeup smudged under your eyes. So I’m always surprised that so many amazing books, with spectacular heroes and heroines, totally forget about this vital support in every person’s life. The Hunger Games, Twilight, The Bone Season, and A Discovery of Witches all pretty much entirely abandon the concept of a true best friend, Twilight coming the closest with Alice and Rosalie, Edward’s ‘sisters’ providing Bella with non-romantic, non-parental support. This is especially interesting as it portrays Bella’s relationships with her school friends as inconsequential and shallow, enhancing the point that the new world she’s stepping into is a far richer, more substantial, and all-encompassing experience.
The Hunger Games at least has the concept of someone who Katniss can be herself with, spend time with and talk to, however he (Gale) quickly turns into a love interest, moving him firmly out of the friend zone (if indeed he was ever truly here in the first place). Katniss’s little sister, Prim, moves towards the best friend slot towards the end of the trilogy, however, she’s never portrayed as Katniss’s equal. Prim is always very much the little, dependent sister, who, along with their mother, loads Katniss up with emotional baggage rather than helping to lighten the load.
The Bone Season and A Discovery of Witches don’t even pay homage to the concept of a best friend; the heroines have a group of colleagues and two aunts respectively to form their support networks. They lack those (non-romantic) people with whom they can totally let down their defences and be vulnerable with, which for me really jars with reality. I get that the whole point of some heroes and heroines is that they are social outcasts, people at the margins who do not fit with the status quo, however, to make this stick, the main character needs to be genuinely depicted in this light, something most authors just can’t bear to do. Certainly none of the heroines mentioned above fit this bill, whereas someone like Lisbeth Salander in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy absolutely does.
So it was really important for me to have a distinct best friend (Cleo) in Legacy, who Anita could turn to in her hours of both need and elation. Cleo provides a frivolous point of difference from Anita, a total, necessary, contrast to my heroine and a much needed point of stability in a tumultuous world. This is something JK Rowling does so wonderfully well in Harry Potter. Harry simply cannot thrive on his own; he needs his best friends, Ron and Hermione, to help guide, ground and even rescue him during the course of the series. They have skills that he does not, and importantly, their skills are attributed equal respect and weight, even though we’re all in absolutely no doubt as to whose story it is. This, for me, explains in large part why Rowling’s books are so wonderful; they recognise that to be a hero, it’s rare to be able to do this on your own. You need true, loyal, diverse, equal, occasionally stubborn best friends to help ground and protect you along the way.
The Hunger Games at least has the concept of someone who Katniss can be herself with, spend time with and talk to, however he (Gale) quickly turns into a love interest, moving him firmly out of the friend zone (if indeed he was ever truly here in the first place). Katniss’s little sister, Prim, moves towards the best friend slot towards the end of the trilogy, however, she’s never portrayed as Katniss’s equal. Prim is always very much the little, dependent sister, who, along with their mother, loads Katniss up with emotional baggage rather than helping to lighten the load.
The Bone Season and A Discovery of Witches don’t even pay homage to the concept of a best friend; the heroines have a group of colleagues and two aunts respectively to form their support networks. They lack those (non-romantic) people with whom they can totally let down their defences and be vulnerable with, which for me really jars with reality. I get that the whole point of some heroes and heroines is that they are social outcasts, people at the margins who do not fit with the status quo, however, to make this stick, the main character needs to be genuinely depicted in this light, something most authors just can’t bear to do. Certainly none of the heroines mentioned above fit this bill, whereas someone like Lisbeth Salander in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy absolutely does.
So it was really important for me to have a distinct best friend (Cleo) in Legacy, who Anita could turn to in her hours of both need and elation. Cleo provides a frivolous point of difference from Anita, a total, necessary, contrast to my heroine and a much needed point of stability in a tumultuous world. This is something JK Rowling does so wonderfully well in Harry Potter. Harry simply cannot thrive on his own; he needs his best friends, Ron and Hermione, to help guide, ground and even rescue him during the course of the series. They have skills that he does not, and importantly, their skills are attributed equal respect and weight, even though we’re all in absolutely no doubt as to whose story it is. This, for me, explains in large part why Rowling’s books are so wonderful; they recognise that to be a hero, it’s rare to be able to do this on your own. You need true, loyal, diverse, equal, occasionally stubborn best friends to help ground and protect you along the way.
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