First Love: Essays on Friendship

A bracing, intimate essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship in the wake of violence, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space.

When Lilly Dancyger’s beloved cousin Sabina was murdered just as both girls were entering their young adult lives, the shock and grief altered her perception of what it meant to be a woman in the world, and rippled through her closest friendships. The loss of her first love—Sabina—becomes the springboard for this bold and refreshing  exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendships and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in First Love is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, expanding outward to dissect cultural assumptions about feminine identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with pop culture and literature ranging from nineteenth century fairytales to true crime, Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the "sad girls” of Tumblr, Dancyger''s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an incisive exploration of what it means to love each other.

First Love elevates friendships to the love stories they truly are, giving them the deep consideration that romantic relationships have enjoyed for centuries. Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive.