Finding new friends is a challenge for older people – after children have grown, marriages have ended, and jobs and homes are downsized.
In Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery, Barbara hosts her best friend for dinner and is surprised when Susan refuses to sit. Instead, she pulls out a list, insisting the relationship must end. Barbara offers various assumptions, corrections and counterpoints, but Susan is adamant. “I just know what being supported feels like. And you weren’t supporting me.”
Troubled and embarrassed, Barbara ponders the elusive qualities of close friendship, reflecting on eight other best friends from her past who also moved on. In her late 50s, Barbara does not fear old age, and instead worries about loneliness after a lifetime of anticipation about growing older with other people. From there, she launches into one of the novel’s saddest observations: “a lot of other people, not just a husband but a whole crowd of people – and I used to know quite a lot of people, the world felt so full of people I knew and liked, and people I felt myself just on the verge of getting to know, and I thought life was always going to drop new friends into my lap to accompany the old ones, but instead what’s happened is the old ones drop off and the new ones do, too, and I don’t think I’ve managed to develop the kind of good strong character that keeps people close to you… the kind that makes approaching old age feel like a reward and a comfort.”
Barbara’s life did not follow an easy path. Divorced twice, she lost a professional job and turned to the food industry, working for much lower wages. Her mother and sister had early deaths. She is exacting, argumentative, and even when she does hold her tongue, acquaintances can’t help but sense Barbara’s judgment and disapproval. Readers naturally find her difficult, and even the character herself notes at one point, “Not liking things has never been a problem for me.” She likewise struggles to converse with her adult son, an only child, and his family and is pained by beautiful memories from their earliest days together: “One of the things that’s difficult about relating toa grown child is that only one of remembers the honeymoon period,” the “perfect moments of speechless mutual adoration… moments where he wanted nothing more and neither did I.”
Set in her ways, she regularly details best practices around cooking, clothing and other ordinary rules for living. Many of these are common sense but other suggestions are downright rigid. Such tendencies lead her to increasingly second-guess her overtures to others and her responses. Barbara suspects a misunderstanding of multiple basic and unwritten rules may be a reason for her own personal failures to the point of self-torture: “But there’s got to be a way to stop thinking like this all of the time. I want my mind to be a quiet and well-ordered room.”
Unfortunately, much of the book’s tone is similar to an afternoon spent with a quarrelsome person, always ready with nonstop complaints and excessive details in any story she shares. At one point, Barbara describes a friend from high school chemistry class, and confesses, “This can’t possibly be interesting to you, since it’s not even interesting to me, and I was there for it.” Such sentences, with authors compelled to admit their characters are boring, foolish or fill-in-the-blank is often a red flag for readers.
It's worthwhile to read this book through the end. Barbara knows what she wants in a friend and what potential friends expect in her. Early in the book, she scoffs about finding friends in a nursing home, adding “People like health and success and symmetry and well-being. They might tolerate aging or illness or bad luck once they get to know you, but it’s not what they’re looking for in someone new.”
She is candid about not wanting to volunteer., the age-old solution for seniors searching for friendship and something to do. “It’s just that important things and money go together in pretty much every other area of life, so I always suspect if there’s work being offered for free, it’s because the work doesn’t actually matter in the first place.”
Readers can be sure they won't agree with many of Barbara’s choices. Still, she puts aside past dislikes and devotes full effort into the task of finding friendship. And the first step is revealed by the book’s title – meet new people and friendship may follow.
