'A wealth of cultural insight . . . men will enjoy and profit from this book as much as women will . . . What a rich diversity of stories Tannen tells' Wall Street Journal

Best friend, old friend, good friend, new friend, neighbour, fellow mother at the school gate, workplace confidante: women's friendships are crucial. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist or confessor. She can also be the source of pain and betrayal.

From casual chatting to intimate confiding, from talking about problems to sharing funny stories, there are patterns of communication and miscommunication that affect friendships. Tannen shows how even the best of friends - with the best intentions - can say the wrong thing, how the ways women friends talk can bring friends closer or pull them apart, but also how words can repair the damage done by words. This illuminating and validating book gets inside the language of one of most women's life essentials - female friendships.

'A useful manual for navigating friendships, a touching account of the various ways women connect - and a welcome non-fiction counterpart to novels such as Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet or the TV series Girls and Big Little Lies' Evening Standard