Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

Hello there. I'm Christina Young and welcome back to Gloucester book clubs podcast in our book Lounge. Tonight I'm joined on the sofa by James and Liz and we're going to be talking about Camila, Sharm Z's, best of friends. It's her latest book and we hope you enjoy.

A dazzling, new novel of friendship identity, and the nobility of other people from the international best-selling author of Home, Fire winner of the women's prize for fiction fourteen-year-old, Maryam and Zara have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business. While Zara keeps her desire, Is secret and dreams of escaping abroad this year. 1988, anything seems possible for the girls and for Pakistan emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto, but a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy.

Brings the girls childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their Futures in ways they cannot imagine. Three decades later in London, Zara, and Maryam was still best friends. Despite living very different lives, but one unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world. Both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition. Best of friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it. And about What we owe to those who've loved us the longest.

Just to forewarn you before you dive into our discussion, then maybe 1 or 2 spoilers. Welcome James. Welcome listen, thanks for joining me again. We're here to talk about best of friends, diminish arms. He's latest novel which we read in book club probably six months or so ago. I think so. I hope you two can still remember it and if you haven't remembered it, if you've done your homework. So I'm going to ask you James straight off. What is this book about? Well, it's called best of friends in some ways, it's an exploration of what friendship is I suppose it takes place in into country's.

First of all, it's in Karachi in Pakistan where the protagonists are adolescent girls and then it jumps into the future where they're both 40, maybe and they've moved to London whether unbelievably successful. But anyway, they are successful. Oil and their relationship comes under some strain. A lot of mention of the word propinquity in the book which is not friendship. Apparently, I'm not quite sure what for think would be mean. So although it obviously, says, in the book, They're not necessarily friends, but they share the same time and space and so obviously, they talk to each other a lot and there's friendship genuine friendship, where two people don't need to share the same time and space to really have a close relationship.

I think that she kept bringing up propinquity. So I think that this book really is about friendship, but it's about a lot of other things as well. It's about immigration and Asylum and it's about Pakistan, and it's a jolly good read. I think it's divided very much into halves, and I found the beginning part in Karachi somehow, more interesting, colorful, and Alive than the second part, which is basically Lee in London, it is about friendship. But I think it's more about integrity. How you define integrity and it tries to paint these two girls and then women into sort of good girl.

Good woman, bad woman and the boundaries between those shift and they somersault at times. So I think it's Looking at how people act within some sort of ethical code as well as friendship and James, you say you like the book, you know, can you send it a bit more about that? What did you specifically like about it? I don't know. We're recording this podcast on a day that we've just heard that Gary lineker has been banned temporarily from doing match of the day because he passed his opinion on the government's immigration policy.

And I think today, I like the book because it kind of shows. Shows the other side, it lifts the lid, a tiny bit on what it's like to be someone who wants to live in Great Britain. Who all the powers that be are against and I don't know, it's nice to when all you're doing is listening to the news, talking about inflatable dinghies coming over the channel to to actually get a version of the other side. I also love to just like Liz, the Pakistan part, I don't know but it Shams is connection with Pakistan, is it felt so real?

This wonderful atmosphere of this this this city in about 1990 under General, Zia with Benazir Bhutto on the way and the celebrations and everything, it was just magical and then you know, you go to London and exactly. As Liz said it's just not quite so real somehow. And so I think Camilla shamsi must have experienced Karachi in the 1990s but it was great. Yeah it does spinach credulity a little bit that these two Girls 14, they start off as schoolgirls in Karachi. Both of them have ended up at the top of their game, their games are very different, but what is the Millionaire's one is fated by the guardian and sort of held out as the conscience of Brittany and that does stretch, could Unity just a little bit in an awful that they are both so successful.

You know, one has the ear of the Prime Minister. The other one is fated for Her ethical stance on immigration. It's not real, is it it's kind of, you know, because the beginning part of the book in Pakistan is totally real. It feels real. Yes. Second part is like one of these American cartoon fairy stories, where suddenly someone's a princess with loads of servants and things like that, because they don't seem to, they don't seem to have conversations that really reflect the important jobs that they've got, you know, their lives are incredibly mundane.

And I would, I would expect them to. I would expect to see some kind of cutting-edge to their behavior which would showed you why they were so rich and successful in the second half, but I agree with you again. I think for me, the key thing was always the somersaulting of the characteristics are of for example, in the beginning of the book in Karachi. Unless you really read, the text carefully is the good girl. The one that the teachers, like the one Who is the sensible? The one that keeps this Wayward friend of hers Miriam out of danger.

In fact, she's not like that at all, but the time you get to the second part of the book, she's a divorcee who basically has casual sex with strangers and seems to have thrown the good girl, image completely off, whereas, Miriam, who was regarded as a bit of a rebel as a schoolgirl. It's now she has a partner. She has a child. Child. She lives a fairly normal domestic life and I find this sort of flipping of the good girl, bad girl, quite interesting humming, red Camellia. Sean's is homefire book which we read us.

A book club of a couple of years ago. This novel didn't didn't quite hit the headline for me. Okay, only gave it 5 out of 10 are book club meetings. It was a bit of a disappointment. I found it hard to believe that. One frightening incident, which we probably shouldn't spoil, but one frightening incident that occurred in there quite privileged teenage years in Karachi have been so traumatic to them both that as adults, it became the single. Most important thing that triggers such powerful revenge in London when they're in their 40s.

You know, it's ahead of the long time since all this has happened and yeah, it's triggered. This really massive Reaction in them and I agree that in their adult years, both living in London. The scenes often seem to me quite superficial even implausible, I do agree with that such as the Revenge plot that was hatched at Checkers. I was thinking. Hmm, cranky. You know, with that, is that very realistic? Maybe, maybe it is, maybe I'm just naive about all these things. But yeah, I did make me wonder at the time.

The I think the reader witnessed The revealing of many of the undercover emotions that exists between Zara and Miriam. And I do remember this one telling line in the book towards the end. I think we're Zara says to Mary and there's a part of me, that's always really hated you. I back to me reveals so much, you know, and possibly quite a lot about teenage girls who have been friends since they were young, you know, that there is always going to be a bit of competitiveness and a bit of jealousy, regardless.

How well you like somebody, you know, they make them a wispy that and I think that came through and I thought that was a very telling comment about them about their friendship with. There's almost a showdown between these two women. Now they are arguing about a certain course of action that happened in the present. I one of them has been instrumental in getting someone from their past deported from the country. So they're arguing about that but the It slips back into this incident. When they were 14 which I agree, nothing Dreadful happened to them, they weren't raped.

They weren't attacked, they weren't physically assaulted and I do wonder whether as you got older, whether it would just fade into one of those stories that you sometimes told someone about. What I think there is one thing, one point that I would make because I agree with you both one of the girls, Miriam was lined up to become the head of the family business which was run by the grandfather. And apparently, the father was no kind of person to run a business and they were no male heirs in particular in even though there were two sisters of Miriam, they were no kind of people to run a business.

And so, it seems right from the age of about 10 Miriam has been taken into this grandfather. Who's the head of this business has confidence and he keeps Dragging her in and saying. Now, what would you do in this situation? We've got somebody stealing from the company. How would you deal with it? And she's got to give these answers to him and she's always really aware that he's might be angry with her whatever and it's quite a tense time for her. And he's schooling, her to be responsible, never to blame anybody else.

And to always look after stuff to be to be the powerful person and you, you know, you know that she wants to be like that. And so this, this actually lines into the What you're talking about as well, isn't it? I mean, it's not just a kind of story about revenge. It's the tension between the two of them, where one of them is responsible and one of them isn't basically which is quite quite quite interesting, it colors the whole thing, a tiny bit. I think the grandfather figure who really only appears in the very early stages, the book He's incredibly hypocritical because he is perfectly prepared to hire thugs to deal with anyone that steps out of line and And does so.

But after this one incident that the girls were subjected to when Mary, I'm almost suggest to him that this could be done to one of the one of the people that hurt them or frighten them. He's absolutely horrified with her and says you're not fit to run a business. I also think it's to do remember in Karachi at the time. After presidents, I own Benazir Bhutto had come in, the status of women was still very much in question. Could go be accepted as the head of a prosperous business. Good question and shamsi portrays their bond as an alliance of opposites almost.

I think in the book, but their individual background seeing pretty adjacent to me. I think Miriam does seem the more wealthy of the to and her background is more wealthy. But they, you know, they're very middle-class. Americans parents can afford to spend summers in London shopping and Zara's parents. Her mother is a school principal. She's got to turn out during the holidays for her job. I think she manages to capture the self-consciousness of the girls at 14. Quite well how they come to terms with the kind of inevitability of their body's changing and that sort of thing.

Because when I do you remember when Larry and comes back from London, Zara notices that she's got something a brass band, you know that she hadn't had before she went and I think she manages that quite well, I mean, Justjust scenes where they're sitting in a bedroom together, taking it in turns, to kiss the poster of George Michael. And, you know, going into a video library and desperately trying to find a copy of Gorillas in the Mist and how treasured that movie would be in Pakistan. I don't know any little scene and all the things that they were into and all the things they did and that conversations about boys and their mystery of the whole thing to them was so well, written.

It was, you could just listen to it all day long. Long will read it if you're reading it, I listened to the audiobook. I agree. One of the men from the past when they were in Karachi actually turns up in the second half of the story. And he actually comments on the fact that whether she was aware of it at 14 Harry. I'm is actually a lesbian, she's gay. Therefore this great incidence of when they went off with the boys. How committed she was to that. She hadn't actually had any boyfriends. In fact, this man from the past actually says to Zara which he ever come on to you.

I, I thought there was something peculiar about her at the time because she wasn't that interested. So amongst all this puberty and becoming a woman Miriam sexuality is much more complicated than that. I think that was true, so I don't know. You seem to agree that friendship is all about those and this is Quote from the book shared Subs texts that no one else could discern. And I think that is a really is really true. When you're very close friends with someone or you have a good relationship with them, you can be in a room with them in a group of people and you've only got to look at each other and you both know what the other is thinking.

You know, there is this subtext. I think between really good friends and and people in relationships as well actually that you kind of know, just by look, I thought she did that really well, and I think towards the beginning of the novel, Oval we come to learn that Miriam knew her parents would pave the way into some University or never knew that her parents money in fact would pave the way into some University or another. I questioned that at the time and I still questioning now just does a fourteen-year-old really know that or is that something that Camilla shamsi wants us the reader to know?

I mean, is it is it true that a 14 year old would have that kind of knowledge about auriemma? Parents got enough to you know pay for me to go to university giving up would be thinking about. Well, if you were like me when you were 14, yes, I mean everything you aware of everything, really? I mean, you you were embarrassed by your parents for certain reasons, and you were proud of your parents. For another reason, I mean, your whole existence was viewed through your parents. I think they would have been, well, aware of what their financial position was on the scale is pertinent.

To a mindset in Karachi in the sense that money can open doors. For example, I knew if you like from 14 that I would be going to University, but I don't think I believed that it could be bought, it still required, a great deal of work on my part money enough wasn't sufficient. Whereas I think in Karachi at that time, money could open doors, much more ease. You think it could, perhaps here? Can we fast-forward a bit to the little bit in the book? Which is a bit that really? I remember feeling very emotional about the time where we have a man who's separated from his wife and children.

He's in a Detention Center that serves as the backdrop to this climax, dispute between Mary and Sarah at the time. And it really upsets me that we've got this subplot going on. About this man in this Detention Center. I wanted more from that subplot, I wanted it to be a bigger part of the story, you know, then it was, it was a very sad outcome to that as well. This guy, you know, had been arrested for being illegal in the country and for working when he shouldn't have been working, but actually, he was really arrested.

You know. It was, it was an accident that he was arrested when he was trying to protect Zara at the time and I found that very emotive. Did you actually wish that? You'd have had a bit more of that kind of stuff going on in the book because I just kind of felt that the subplot was often for me a bit more compelling than the main story. This offer quite likes the juxtaposition of good bad deserving, undeserving in the sense that I some the one that you were talking about is deported so is Jimmy but he is a character that is portrayed as an undeserving.

An asylum. Seeker. I use a bad boy, he's done bad things. Therefore, his getting trucked up the country, shouldn't worry so much about Good Old Rasam. Who was only trying to earn a crust of bread getting chucked out. And I do find her, the authors tendency to divide people into camps. I don't like that, it shouldn't be where you deserve, Asylum. You don't you're a good girl, you're a bad girl and she does tend to do that. Quite a bit. I like the Detention Center. I mean it was most exaggerated the number of doors that you have to pass through to get there.

It was there were about 20 security doors and searches and then eventually it was described really well as being the bleakest of places. But it was just a I mean it was really a device to try and illustrate the author was trying to illustrate what? How one of the girls was responsible and got things done? And that the other girl was rather more dilatory and let things happen and other people tended to take the responsibility for helping her out which, you know. And so the, the Detention Center, the the chap who Christina said, it helped her out was actually getting deported because he'd helped Zara.

And the, the friend was the one who was always picking up the pieces and dealing with things and saying, well our sort that out for you. I'll sort that out for you and Zara never really appreciated. It was Is the thing. So I mean I'm not sure that it would be fair if the author put more Detention Center in because she might not have been making her point about these two girls relationship but it but yes, I thought it was great in the detention center and I thought that we need to know a little bit more about what happens with people coming into this country really shows how Zara you know the one that the guardian and Panorama and use like really love, who is up there comfortably on her.

Pedestal feeling desperately for these people. But who is it? That actually gets her hands dirty and tries to do something that's Miriam and you could you could imagine the Zara's principles but getting the way where's Miriam actually again and again takes the rap for Zara takes the rap. I mean it's so ironic that the person that does something should then be the person who picks up all the blame. And I mean, it's I think it's true in life when you think about it. It's not what you usually Expect When You're the person who's responsible and does everything.

But I mean, Camilla Shams is obviously taking a long, look at life and it's quite a nice point to make in the book, really? In fact, though, I mean, so it does pay quite a high price for all of that. At the end of the book, doesn't she? Because she feels she has to resign from her position, as, you know, the head of this civil liberties organization. So, you know, she loses. She loses her job. Job. I don't know whether she loses her career over it because we don't really know that at the end but she does pay quite a high price in the end.

He chooses to, I mean, nobody would know. I think it's Mariam said, who on Earth would ever know what I've done or who would believe them if they made a claim against it. So Zara chooses to give up her job, that was leaking suspicion that she will be bouncing back into another one, fairly similar fairly Yeah, probably either woman. He's had the principles, if you like Marion, the one who has not been so principled because she's been working in a social media Organization for a long time. So she's prepared to do what has to be done to sort situations out which she does do like, you said Liz, she's the one who's proactive and sorting stuff out all the time for both of them whereas, you know, star has one who has the Apples, but doesn't always act on them English showdown, at the end between these two women.

It's brought very much to our attention, which we've known all along that when they were girls. When it was actually sorrow, who was responsible for the mess, that they got them into kept silent. When school and parents were blaming Mariam is saying it's good job. You have your good good friend to try and You in a bit. Where is the complete reverse was concerned? Zara kept silent? Because she didn't want to jeopardize the possibility of a scholarship to a British university. Did you think that Miriam is a better friend?

Yes. I mean, in the sense that I don't like characters or people for that matter, that maintain this facade of integrity and oh, my ethics, but underneath are prepared to To act in a fairly morally. Reprehensible way, I let your friend take the complete blame for something that you instigated because you don't want to jeopardize your future. I mean it depends on how you view our friendship. Of course I mean you're asking us what we think is a friendship but loyalty to me is the absolute number one, you know.

And I mean if you can't be loyal to your friends if you talk badly about them behind their back or something like that, then you're not really a good. Friend and certainly, if one of your friends gets into trouble and you sort everything out for her and then she turns around and blames you for being so difficult or so bossy or whatever, it doesn't really seem fair. And yes, Marianne was the better friend. They're loaded question. So I'd like to hear someone else giving a different opinion really because it won't be interested.

I think we all agreed sort of on that what we discussed it with club didn't because I did ask that question. I did the end does principle of loyalty make for better friends. And yet. And and that's that actually is a tricky one. Because if you if you have a friend who you fundamentally disagree with about something that does your loyalty to them, stop you from saying what? Your opinion is very close, friends can disagree passionately and take totally different stances. That's not really what I'm talking about.

It's more that one friend allowed, the other friend to be blamed Please confirm yes. And when the towards the end of the book as adults, Mario Mystery trying to pursue a policy that will get Zara off the hook Zara says to her. Well okay but just don't tell me and in the end she tries to wriggle out of that and she said oh well I didn't ask you to not tell me what you were going to do. I just wanted you to look, tell me what you found out. She's trying to wriggle Go back up onto The High Ground. I didn't, I didn't really set.

You could go ahead and do whatever you want you to. I just want to know about it. The ending of the novel leaves, quite a lot to the Region's imagination. I guess that's deliberate as well. What did you think can become of the Friendship at that point? Because those had a fairly major falling out and they by the end of the of the book, would you have written that ending differently? If you'd been writing it and what do you think might become of that friendship? In the future. I quite liked the open ending.

I mean they had since getting back into contact with each other over the years as adult women met each other regularly, even though they knew they were pulls apart politically, but they could still enjoy each other's company and walks and lunches and things. And remember that Zara was a very favorite onto who like to marry a daughter. Yes, that there was a close relationship between marry a daughter and sorrow who she looked on as a family member. I think there comes a point when you look at each other and the sort of how could you do that?

How could you let that happen? Takes a lot of healing. They may well get back into contact with each other but I think it will take time. I think so too. I mean I do I remember that bit right at the end of the book where they because they both have this kind of routine of going for walks with each other on a Sunday don't lie, they go through apart and they're still doing that on a Sunday as well, and they come across each other kind of walking the same room and but they kind of deliberately walk separately.

They deliberately don't acknowledge each other. They don't get back into walking with each other, but they carry all walking in the same direction. Ian, which kind of leaves you thinking? Are they at some point? Going to come back together like you Sailors is that going to happen, you know, a few years down the line, maybe believes that solar mariam's daughter who have yes, a great deal in common with the stance that Zara takes. She made a mediator between the two of them, what I found quite interesting.

It's Just amusing, but you felt terribly by smiling at it was the descriptions of the level of corruption in this country, you know, that you can code. If you had sufficient funds make donations to political parties, which gave you such of access to ministers, you could pull strings. And, is that very amusing scene? Where all I could think of was Boris Johnson, where Mary Adams, talking to a prime minister who's coming on Onto her very strongly and stroking, her up and flirting with her and you're thinking as far as you know somehow we expected the fact that the would bre bribery and corruption in Karachi because of that's Pakistan but it was just as much going on in at the British end I mean just to sort of round off the podcast really.

Is this a book that you would recommend other people to read? Is it a book that you recommend for a book club discussion? Yes, I think generally our discussion is kind of we all are completely agree, really. In the picture of Pakistan that we get in the first half of the book is just unmissable. It's just so wonderful and that the picture of London that we get in the second half of the book isn't quite so. Genuine feeling that the point is that everything that happened in Pakistan at the beginning is coming home to roost in the second half and the is Landings.

Pretty cool. Really? I I mean I I would recommend it. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And it's completely prohibit in it as well. Yeah, but you put me, there is one telling point when this incident that is the, the fundamental part of the first book with the two girls later on Miriam says, oh it's, you know, the most frightening part of my life and Sarah says, no. Remember she her father is a cricket commentator before the change of government and her father is threatening And with all sorts of thuggery, if he doesn't suit broadcast two presidents, I hear.

And she said, no, the most frightening thing was being powerless, under a dictatorship. It's quite a thread of politics. Running through this at the both Pakistani end and the London end funnily enough. When I read it the first time and we discussed it, a book group, I was average in my estimation of it. Having looked at it, perhaps in more detail. Now, particularly individual pieces of text. I actually think there's more depth to it than I did the first time around. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it coming back to something after a gap of time?

What about you, James? Have you got any different thoughts about the book now than you did six months ago, I think it's great and Pakistan is fascinating, I think it would just be so great to visit a country like that because I don't know. I do like watching cricket and they've recently had a test Series in Pakistan and every time, the camera pulls back from the ground and you can see the main roads around the cricket ground. You can kinda see this chaos on the street and lots and lots of little motor bikes and things like that.

And you can't help thinking wouldn't it be great. It'll be so warm. There, it'll be so nice to just wander around in that. Chaos and see what goes on when when everything in Britain is so Topshop of moss bras and everything and cost a coffee, Pakistan is a place that would really be different. So, lovely. Lovely description of how people behave and how adolescent girls in a Muslim country, see boys and they want to have relationships. And yet they're stopped from having relationships and they've got to be so careful.

And if they're ever seen with a boy, then they might get expelled from school or something. All This is just fascinating. Thank you out, their listeners for coming. Back to us. We'll be back again in about a month's time when we'll be doing this all over again. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Gloucester book clubs podcasts. You can find us on Spotify. Anchor, FM, Google and apple podcasts. And many more we look forward to. Having you join us again soon. Thank you for listening to Gloucester book clubs podcasts. You can find us on Spotify. Anchor, FM, Google and apple podcasts. And many more we look forward to. Having you join us again soon.

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