Just Between Us

Just Between Us

'In these stories we come across women's sense that female intimacy is sacred. We see the huge risks a woman is prepared to take when she opens herself to friendship, and the painful damage women can inflict on each other, and on themselves, when things go wrong.' - Helen Garner

Are female friendships always effortless and nurturing, or can they cause more pain than delight? What happens when they break down? And who can you talk to when your best friend isn't there anymore?

In this collection of fiction and non-fiction stories, Australia's best women writers put their friendships – and themselves – under the spotlight as they reveal the truth about female friendship in all its complexity, fragility and heartache.

Nikki Gemmell looks at the hardwiring that keeps us bonded in tightly knit packs, but makes us feel oh-so-claustrophic in mothers' groups and at the school gate. Melina Marchetta reveals the peculiar shame of being overlooked for the high-status netball positions of Centre and Goal Attack. Liz Byrski conducts a forensic examination of her own friendship history, and finds some uncomfortable patterns. And Merridy Eastman pens a letter from Helena to Hermia from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which shines the light on one of literature's most famously dysfunctional female friendships.

With its uncompromising honesty, raw emotion and razor-sharp wit, Just Between Us shows how our friendships with other women define us and shape our lives, even when they end…


Maya Linden, Christie Nieman, Maggie Scott, Natalie Kon-Yu and Miriam Sved are Melbourne writers and academics. When they met in a writers' group in Melbourne, they discovered they shared a dark secret: all had been dumped by a female friend at some point, and they all still carried the pain. Once they realised there was no book that examined these issues from a contemporary perspective, they decided to make their own.


Just Between Us
Macmillan
Authors: Maya Linden, Christie Nieman, Maggie Scott, Natalie Kon-Yu, Miriam Sved
ISBN: 9781742612140
RRP: $29.99