Metro, October 2022
Growing up amid a backdrop of political unrest and Western pop music in 1980s Karachi, Zahra and Maryam certainly have a clearly defined vision of their adult lives. Of marriage, children, success and their friendship; “this one person, this North Star, this rock”. There’s something remarkable about the easily readable way in which Shamsie marshals the complex internal and external factors in Pakistan that gradually corrupt such innocence.
She then gives this quasi-coming of age story depth by exploring what happened next. This second half, with both now high-flyers in contemporary London, is less successful – mainly because any conflicts or rivalries (Zahra is a civil liberties lawyer, Maryam a venture capitalist funding ethically problematic facial-tagging technology) feel contrived and bloodless.
In some ways it’s quite a brave idea to eschew dramatic tension for an exploration of lifelong platonic friendship. But where her last novel Home Fires navigated people and politics with nuance and compelling ferocity, Best Of Friends feels less urgent. Still, a real reminder of how the stories we tell about ourselves are shaped by the shared hopes and dreams of our youth.
