Manic Pixie Dream Bestie

“There was no question that we would immediately connect and fuse together, becoming inseparable,” thinks Ruth, the narrator of Stephanie Wambugu’s debut novel Lonely Crowds, while running into a new classmate at the grocery store. She’s right. Her friendship with the classmate, Maria, leads to decades of inseparability. First at Catholic school (where they are two of the only Black girls), then Bard College (where they are two of the only Black girls), and, finally, in the New York art scene (where they are two of the only Black girls). Maria is brash, ambitious, callous. Ruth is shy, indecisive, sensitive. There is both the solace of sameness and the attraction of opposites. The friendship is irresistible and, ultimately, terrible. The book is neither.