Literary editor Will Schwalbe is best known for The End of Your Life Book Club, in which he wrote about reading and discussing with his dying mother some of the books that had the greatest impact on their lives. In We Should Not Be Friends, he turns his attention to an unlikely friendship that has also affected him profoundly.
We Should Not Be Friends offers a rare view of male friendship, which has received far less attention than platonic closeness between women. (One recent exception is The Summer Friend, by Charles McGrath, another longtime editor.) Schwalbe's new book is a tale about connecting across divides — which is particularly heartening in our polarized culture.
