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Dear Reader, If you’ve been to a college reunion lately and noticed a bunch

of crazy women in the local pub singing bad eighties rock . . . and, if you’re in a certain upstate New York college town, then it’s a good bet that those are my friends, and I’m the one in the middle, dancing badly.

We’ve been doing this every fi ve years since we graduated. As a group, we celebrate the memorable times we spent together lolling on grassy quads, as well as the years after graduation, where, cash-strapped and struggling, we suffered through one another’s horrid fi rst jobs, romantic relationships, and roach-infested apartments. Now we’re scattered all over the country and settled into marriage, mortgages, careers, and family life. When we get together, we tend to embarrass our children.

We’re an odd and varied bunch: One raises money for charity by biking in 100-mile marathons; another, a gregarious working mother, juggles incredible responsibilities yet throws fabulous parties; and a third started her own landscaping business in midlife.

Honestly, I don’t remember how we were drawn together all those years ago. We’re a jumble of religions and races and socioeconomic classes and political beliefs. There are rough edges, old hurts, and fundamental disagreements. There’s also respect, humor, and empathy. It’s a recurring miracle that we’ve maintained our bond despite the distances of both time and geography. We know we are blessed. That’s why, every fi ve years, we make Herculean efforts to reunite at our alma mater.

Magic occurs when we are in a room together. We talk about politics, sex, money, religion—all the things you’re not supposed

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to talk about in polite company. We roll out the old stories, and then tell new ones until we laugh ourselves to tears. By the wee hours of the morning, we’re at the college pub singing hair-band power-ballads and dancing as if no one is watching. And by the time we return exhausted to our regularly scheduled lives, we are sure of one essential truth: Life has taken us in very different directions, yet we all strive for the same goal—joy in our work, our marriage, our parents, our children . . . and our friends.

This novel, The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship, is my little valentine to all of them.


reading group guide for

The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

1. Which of the four women do you most relate to? Is it the one whose lifestyle most resembles yours? If not, why?

2. Rachel chooses not to tell her friends about her illness because she feels she is sparing them. Was this the right decision? Is it ever right to keep the news of a potentially fatal illness from your loved ones?

3. Toward the end of her life, Rachel thought long and hard about what her friends needed to do to improve their lives. Do you think Rachel understood the full consequences of what would happen to them if they followed her last wishes?

4. One of the themes of this book is that friends know you better than you know yourself. Rachel, in particu-lar, has a good bead on each of her friends, but Kate, Jo, and Sarah also, in some cases, see each other more clearly than they see themselves. Do you know your friends better than they know themselves? What advice would you give a good friend on how to improve her life? What advice do you think she’d give you?


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5. Kate’s fi fteen-year marriage faces a crisis born of the stresses and responsibilities of raising a modern fam-ily. Do you relate to her troubles? Would your parents relate to her troubles? What about your grandparents?

6. Do you consider Kate’s behavior—skydiving and trav-eling to India—to be irresponsible for a mother of three young children? If you were in Kate’s position, caught between a deathbed promise to an old friend and the responsibilities of family, how risky a task would you be willing to do? Where is the acceptable line of risk for a mother? Is that line the same for a father?

7. Paul reacts very negatively to Kate’s choice to take a sudden vacation to India. Was his reaction justifi ed? What are the factors that complicate his response? If you are married with a family, how do you think your spouse would react, if you did the same?

8. Why do you think Sarah clung to the memory of Colin for so long? Why did she resist Sam despite the strong physical attraction? If Rachel’s letter had not forced Sarah to seek Colin, do you think she and Sam would have ever gotten together?

9. Rachel chooses to have a child as a single mom, using a sperm donor. Knowing her lifestyle, what do you think about her choice? Why do you think she chose to have a child at all?

10. Jo’s attitude toward Kate’s busy life is skeptical and dis-missive but changes quickly when she is forced to be a full-time mother to Gracie. Have you seen friendships between mothers and their working peers disintegrate under the same pressures?


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11. Jo’s early life as a foster child, as well as the memo-ries of her mother’s struggles as a single mom, would perhaps make her the worst candidate to adopt an orphan. What factors encouraged Rachel to choose Jo over Kate, and did she make the right choice?

12. Motherhood is often described as sacrifi ce. What sac-rifi ces did Kate, Rachel, and Jo make in order to raise their families? How did they each feel about their sac-rifi ces? Is it ever possible to be fully comfortable with the choices a woman must make when she chooses to have a family?

13. Rachel mentions that the friends have grown apart because they didn’t properly maintain their friendship. Rachel’s three best friends have become so busy with their own lives that they don’t realize what is happen-ing to their friend. But Rachel seems to understand. Do you understand?


about the author

Lisa Verge Higgins

Friends who know me as an author are often surprised to fi nd out that I was once a chemist. In fact, when I wrote my fi rst novel, I was studying for a PhD at Stanford University. That kind of smarty-pants revelation tends to grind conversations to a halt, so it’s easier to just stay mum.

The situation isn’t as crazy as it sounds. While I was in graduate school, teaching, studying, and working in a lab, the creative side of my brain was simply withering. So much analysis, so much math! Writing a dramatic story about lov-ers in revolutionary France was just, well, therapy. The real surprise came when a charming editor in New York decided to pay me for my labors. Until then, I hadn’t even considered the option of writing as a career.

If I hadn’t met a certain hot rugby player, I probably would have tinkered at both professions forever. We’d con-nected the year before, in the last few weeks before we’d graduated from our East Coast college. Apparently smitten, he decided to move clear across the country just to be with me in California. After he fi nished law school, he made me an offer. If I’d move back east, he said, with a lusty twinkle, he’d


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support me while I continued my burgeoning writing career. But here’s the catch: I had to marry him.

Then, in a glorious fl ash—and that’s how I remember a few years in Manhattan—I was living in the wilds of New Jer-sey, married, mortgaged, and with multiple small children. Though I had twelve books to my credit, writing fell to the wayside as I focused on the care and feeding of the lovely lit-tle moppets who fi lled my days. But writers never really stop gathering material, and suburban family life turned out to be richer than I’d ever imagined. When my kids entered school, I was bursting with ideas, and I knew I had to write again. The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship is the result.

As for my former career . . . well, I still devour the Science section of the Tuesday New York Times. I read, wistfully, of chemists working on breakthroughs in drug synthesis. But writing has afforded me the opportunity to work and stay at home. For my kids, and for me, that has been the greatest blessing.


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