True Friends
by Patti Miller

A revealing and powerful memoir about the making and unmaking of friendships

A$32.99

(Trade paperback)

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Overview

Friendships are among the most important relationships in our lives, often outlasting love affairs, marriages, even, at times, family connections. The loss of a friend can be one of life’s most disturbing events, yet these ‘friend break-ups’ are little acknowledged in our culture.

In True Friends, acclaimed author Patti Miller recounts the joyful making and then painful ending of a long, close friendship. It is a deep and influential relationship in her life, but when it inexplicably unravels, Patti is left searching for answers. As she tries to make sense of this ending, Patti considers other important friendships throughout her life, questioning who we are drawn to, what we really know of each other and why some friendships endure while others end.

Evocative and intimate, this engaging book brings together the personal and the universal and reminds us of the centrality of friendships in our lives.

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Reviews

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ebook

Kathryn Heyman

‘Warm and welcoming, True Friends is full of candid insights about the threads of friendship that weave through our lives – and what it means when a friendship is lost. Reading it, I felt connected to – and enlarged by – a whole new circle of friendship. I loved it.’

Kristina Olsson

‘True Friends is at once a visceral and tender exploration of friendship’s consolations and risks, the mysteries of connection and the creative life. In its raw depth and honesty, the story reveals as much about Miller as it does about relationships and the creative life — and the tensions that spark between them.’

Ceridwen Dovey

‘This brave and beautiful book explores what friendships give to and take from us on our life journeys, while also contemplating the mercurial nature of memory and the sometimes treacherous impulse towards storytelling. A profound meditation on how bound up we become in the lives and stories of our friends, no matter if the friendship is fleeting or lasting, each person comes away transformed in significant ways.’

Patti Miller

Patti Miller was raised on Wiradjuri land in central western NSW and now lives in Sydney. She is the author of Writing Your Life (Allen & Unwin, 1994, 2001); The Last One Who Remembers (Allen & Unwin, 1997); Child (Allen & Unwin, 1998); Whatever the Gods Do (Random House, 2003); The Memoir Book (Allen & Unwin, 2007); the award-winning The Mind of a Thief (UQP, 2012); Ransacking Paris (UQP, 2015); Writing True Stories (Routledge, 2017); and The Joy of High Places (NewSouth, 2019). She has also taught memoir and creative non-fiction for many years around Australia and in Fiji, Bali, Paris and London.