Erica’s Pick of the Week: So Old, So Young

There’s no shortage of books that champion the sustaining power of friendships when life gets hard. More rare are stories about when friendship gets hard – and rarer still are ones that don’t tie it up with a neat bow. Grant Ginder’s latest novel, So Old, So Young, is a beautifully moving exception. 

So Old, So Young follows a group of college friends as they navigate the challenges of adulthood. The trick: we only check in with them five times, at five separate parties, across two decades. From weddings to funerals and everything in between, we witness how each member grows up – or doesn’t – and how the bonds between them hold fast or fray. 

In 2007, fledgling journalist Mia attends a New Year’s Eve party with her roommates Sasha and Adam. The trio catches up with her former college classmates, including the hosts, Richie and Marco – who Mia can’t look away from. Sparks fly, snark abounds, and the future looks bright indeed.

A few years later, the gang gathers at a destination wedding, and life looks different. Mia and Marco are not together. Richie and Adam are. It’s a fraught evening, with hints of bigger trouble to come. Over the next fifteen years, the group struggles with relationships, careers, parenting, and more. The years are filled with triumphs and setbacks and change. Always change.

Ginder does a lot of things in this book very, very well: The clever banter. The pitch-perfect parties (who among us has not suffered through a dinner where a couple pretends not to fight?). The gradual evolution of the characters, each iteration accruing wisdom and wounds. He excels at the tiny moments– telling glances, a too-sharp quip, a too-long pause – that reveal who these people really are, no matter what they say to each other (and themselves). 

But what he does best is to make us care about these messy, vulnerable, complicated people. There are no villains. Nobody is blameless. Everyone is doing the best they can, which makes it all the harder to see them drift apart. We want them to find a way back to each other, and discovering if they succeed will have you tearing through the story even as you savor it. It’s reflective, bittersweet, and thought-provoking – the perfect fit for fans of Lily King and Gabrielle Zevin.