Lilly Dancyger's third book, First Love, collects 15 poignant interlocking essays about the author's closest female friendships.
Dancyger (Negative Space) is captivated by the "idea of best friends as sisters." Her first best friend--indeed, her "first love"--was her cousin Sabina. They were close in age, and they "were both only daughters of single mothers." Sabina is also, tragically, the subject of the collection's final essay, "On Murder Memoirs," which tries to make sense of her rape and murder by a stranger at age 20. Here Dancyger decries the tendency of true crime to focus on killers and investigators rather than victims. She was determined that her account of Sabina would be "a love story" instead.
Love and death coexist here. "Sad Girls" stands out for its blend of Sylvia Plath fandom, social media tropes, and Dancyger's bipolar friend Heather's death by suicide. "Partner in Crime" compares Dancyger's and Haley's self-destructive teenage habits with those depicted in the film Heavenly Creatures. Dancyger is nostalgic for the freedom of being young and unsupervised in New York City and Europe. Occasionally, friendship shades into romance; in "Kissing Girls," she maps her bisexuality. In "Mutual Mothering," a nuanced examination of how friends nurture each other, Dancyger also ponders whether to have a child.
Experimentation with form in "How to Support a Friend Through Grief" (a second-person, numbered list) and "Portraiture" (which incorporates dialogues with her photographer friend Courtney) complements the first-person narratives. Several flash pieces, including one on her tattoo commemorating Sabina, change up the pace. This sensitive interrogation of women's relationships is perfect for fans of Melissa Febos and Emma Straub. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck