I think that The Geography of Friendship suits readers that are interested in reading a book that deals with female relationships, past experiences, reflections over what went wrong in life. If you like me are more interested in thrillers, nerve-racking and heart racing ones that leave you almost breathless, well then this is not the book to pick.

Lisa, Samantha, and Nicole experiences something that would define their lives for the next two decades. Through flashbacks do we get to know what happened and why they stopped being friends. The book is wordy, lots of reminiscing about the past, growing up not to mention their lives after they split. There is a brief event towards the end when we learn what happened and that's the only real action-filled moment. What makes it worth the while for me is that the writing is good. I was just engrossed in the story and I'm not sure if I would have finished the book if it had been longer.

So, if you are interested in reflecting books, about friendship, growing up and looking back. Then, why not go for this book. 

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review! ( )

The Geography of Friendship is a quite intense and atmospheric read. Set in the Australian bush, we follow three women as they recreate a hike that they first undertook more than twenty years previously.

Nicole, Lisa and Samantha were friends back then, school friends in fact, but have drifted apart over the years. Something happened that first time round that changed all of their lives and they need to deal with it by going through the motions of the hike all over again.

First of all, the setting. It's not an easy hike and it honestly feels as though the bush is the fourth character. As I say, atmospheric and evocative. The three women seem uneasy, both times around, with the wilderness around them and the potential dangers lurking within. The pivotal event comes quite late in the book so there is a sense of foreboding throughout. We know who might be involved but not what is going to happen.

The chapters focus on one character in turn, looking back at the way their lives have turned out and we see how the first hike may have affected them. There's also the dynamic between the three women thrown into the mix. Their relationship isn't always easy.

I found this to be a quite densely written book and as such not the easiest of reads. It's quite introspective and it's definitely a slow burner of a story, but I did find it a story that I wanted to stick with to find out what happened and why it affected the women so much.

This is very much a story of friendship and one defining event that both bound the characters together, and at the same time pushed them apart. As a debut, it's accomplished and well-plotted. ( )

Three women (Samantha, Lisa, and Nicole) in their forties re-enact a 5-day hike on an isolated coastal trail. When they began this hike 24 years earlier, they had a confrontation with an aggressive man in the parking lot at the trailhead. Thereafter he watched them and deliberately instilled fear by making silent but threatening gestures. It is obvious that something happened before the end of the trip; whatever transpired changed the three and destroyed their friendship because they have not spoken to each other in over 20 years.

Lisa convinces the other two women to take the hike again. She suggests they can reshape the memories of the original experience, thereby healing the wounds that were inflicted. Perhaps too their fractured friendship can be mended; she hopes “to have the qualities of their friendship returned to her and all the goodness that might come with it if it can be.” There is certainly no doubt that the experience had a major impact on their lives. Lisa thinks of how the landscape and what happened “Damaged them. How much of what happened here has been carried with them into the everyday, washed up in their lives like those fragments of stone.” Samantha thinks of how “their friendship had unraveled and Samantha doesn’t think she’s felt good about herself since.” Nicole thinks about how “She didn’t believe or trust in herself to succeed [because everything] . . . that was strong and good about her was taken away . . . [and] She lost her faith in humanity that day.”

It is not until the end that the reader learns exactly what happened on that fateful hike, so there is a great deal of suspense in the book. As the women walk the trail in the present, there are flashbacks to what occurred along the same sections of trail. There was a pervasive air of menace and even the rugged landscape seemed threatening. Though the timeframe has changed, the locale is the same so the women are anxious, and because of their 20-year estrangement, there’s tension among them. All of these emotions are passed on to the reader.

Each of the women emerges as a distinct individual with clearly identifiable traits. For instance, one is motivated by anger, another is the peacekeeper, and the third distrusts people. This differentiation is achieved by the novel’s structure. Each woman is the focus of an equal number of chapters. We hear her inner dialogue as she remembers the past, thinks about the choices she made then, and considers how subsequent decisions in her life were influenced by the past: “Who or what might she have been if these things hadn’t happened to her?”

Each of the women is dynamic. Mostly each learns about herself. Lisa, for instance, acknowledges that when they drifted apart, “they weren’t running from each other. They were running from themselves.” At the beginning, it is easy for them to blame each other for what happened: “Trying to make her say Yep, all my fault, so she can have a clear conscience.” Eventually, however, each must acknowledge her role in what happened during the hike and the dissolution of their friendship: “Memory might try and serve it differently, that one person instigated . . . more than another, but in truth they were all complicit . . . ”.

The book examines the dynamics of friendships. Samantha describes their friendship: “They were tight. Inseparable. Individual slights led to collective umbrage. Heart scars were shared.” Nicole agrees: “They only had to be themselves. That’s what made their friendship strong.” On the first hike, the friendship was tested; as they faced increasing fear, their stress caused them to turn on each other. And after the first hike, “It only took two weeks to undo eight years [of friendship].” Each mourns the loss of the friendships. One of them acknowledges “She still feels the loss of what they had. She registers it as an irretrievable absence inside her” and another thinks her friends would have helped her, that maybe “they’d have looked out for her and steered her away from a man they would have recognized as good at manipulation.” Can the women repair their relationships if they realize that a friendship has “to be nurtured and cared for, like a garden” and that if one lightens the burden of another, “She doesn’t notice the extra weight after a while. It soon becomes a part of her own”?

As soon as I started reading this book, I was totally absorbed. It is so emotionally immersive and thought-provoking that I will not soon forget it. I keep asking myself how I would have reacted in similar circumstances.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). ( )

The Geography of Friendship is the story of 3 women who were once friends. When they were 20, these 3 girls took a five day hike down the Australian coast. Something traumatic happened on that hike, and the girls went their separate ways. Now, twenty years after that event, the same three now 40 year old women take the hike again. The story line is slow and literary. It's introspective about how that traumatic past event carried forward and affected each life differently. The suspense lies in learning what exactly happened twenty years ago that drove them all apart. It's told in past and present so it's bits of information. The description of Australia is beautiful and lyrical. I wanted a faster pace for this story, but it was well written as it was. The characters are flawed and real. It's a good story about female friendships. I recommend for anyone who enjoys women's fiction. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review. ( )