Friend Recommendations
144 words
I once recommended Sigrid Nunez’s Sempre Susan to a friend only to be told (and then to remember, though faintly) that they had been the one to recommend that book to me, that their recommendation had been the reason I’d read it.
The hurt in their voice was so clear, and naturally I felt guilty for having read the book without allowing the presence of my friend to keep me company on the page.
Readers court each other with reading—it’s the only real courtship, in my opinion, the best way to locate what sort of world is held common. This particular friendship only lasted a few years and felt like a compromised romance, each of us seemingly resisting the suspicion that something wasn’t quite right, a growing awareness that the other might be a spy from an enemy nation. We no longer speak.