Ten of the most captivating fictional frenemies

Amelia Morris is a writer and gymnastics fan. Her food memoir, Bon Appétempt, was published in 2015 and her debut novel, Wildcat, was released last month. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, The Millions, and USA Today.

Morris also co-created the podcast, Mom Rage. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

At Publishers Weekly she tagged ten of the most captivating fictional frenemies (or ten examples of humans being complicated), including:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Just thinking about the arc of the relationship between Ishiguro’s Kathy and Ruth makes my heart ache. Ruth is essentially a classic mean girl, and yet because of the position she’s put in (I won’t spoil anything in case you haven’t read it), she’s also incredibly vulnerable and needy. She needs her best friend, Kathy, and Kathy, even though Ruth is not a great friend, needs her back.

Read about another entry on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Edward Ashton's eight titles about what it means to be human, Bethany Ball's list of the seven weirdest high schools in literature, Zak Salih's eight books about childhood pals—and the adults they become, Rachel Donohue's list of seven coming-of-age novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural, Chris Mooney's list of six top intelligent, page-turning, genre-bending classics, James Scudamore's top ten list of books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue