First Love

Essays on Friendship

Author  Lilly Dancyger
First Love

A “vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays” (Associated Press) that treats women’s friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space

“A tender, unswerving homage to her found family, but also an insightful study of friendship as identity-crafting.”—Elle

Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger’s devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality…