First Love

Essays on Friendship

By: Lilly Dancyger

Narrated by: Lilly Dancyger

A “vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays” (Associated Press) that treats women’s friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space

“A tender, unswerving homage to her found family, but also an insightful study of friendship as identity-crafting.”—Elle

Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger’s devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairy tales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.

Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.

©2024 Lilly Dancyger (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“First Love is like a paper fortune teller as essay collection, but for looking into Dancyger’s past instead of her future. Her life folds and refolds in each of these essays, revealing more as she goes in unexpected flashes, and she makes it look easy as she does it. . . . A heartbreaking, funny, wise companion.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“First Love is bracing in its honesty and verve, and is as heady and intoxicating as the relationships it details. It’s an astonishing work, one that made me laugh and cry and feel grateful and nostalgic for my own friendships across the eras of my life.”—Chloé Cooper Jones, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Easy Beauty

“This book is a goddamn marvel of a mixtape—a fervent, generous compilation of love songs brought together so that the whole is even more meaningful than its parts. First Love is poignant, ferociously smart, and unflinchingly honest.”—CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife

Grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go!

I have looked forward to this release for months. Female friendship was definitely my first love and this collection of essays brings it all back. Such a crucial time in my life, the us against the world mentality, the branching off into the bigger world and leaving those relationships behind, sometimes by choice, sometimes by tragedy. Dancyger’s narration is intimate and transformative. The stories stay with me long after I’ve finished listening for the day.

Skip It

If there is one thing about me, it's that I will read any book that is a commentary on friendship, especially complex female friendships. Its a topic that is close to my heart and one I find so fascinating. So when I heard of this book, I was instantly on board. Essays seemed like the perfect way to talk about the innumerable ways that friendships weave into our lives. However, these essays were so discordant and I don't feel that they were succinctly tied together or had a tight overarching theme to them. I was left feeling disappointed by the content, the writing, and the flippancy shown in many of the essays.