Writer Friendship Novels: The Depiction of Female Friendship in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

This thesis examines a selection of novels from the 1960s to present day that consider female friendship as a central theme: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (2012-2016), Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017) and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962). This thesis argues that these novels demonstrate the potential of female friendships when they are elevated from a subsidiary relationship to the primary one in women’s lives. As representatives of the previously unrecognised sub-category of female friendship novels that I call “Writer Friendship novels”, Ferrante, Rooney and Lessing’s texts demonstrate the inherently collaborative nature of friendship and of writing itself.