Just Between Us is a compilation of short stories – both memoir and fiction – by some of Australia’s favourite female authors. These stories are about friendship and most of them relating the tragic tales of how many female relationships painfully breakdown.

I love the concept of this anthology. I’ve often wondered what exactly has gone wrong in my own relationships with female friends and reading this collection has made me feel better knowing that I’m not alone in my confusion.

There’s a great variety of stories in this book ranging from stories about first friendships to those which have spanned decades. There are fictional accounts of high school dramas to real life tales of how motherhood and time affects friendship. I enjoyed reading the stories by authors I love and I plan to check out some other works by the authors I was less familiar with.

This is a well thought out compilation with enough variety that I think all readers will find something to relate to. Definitely one I’m going to be lending to my mum.

It is most often the end of friendship that is explored in Just Between Us. In the editor's introduction they share that the impetus for this book came from a discussion where they came to recognise the absence of stories about "a slow breakdown, or an unexpected break-up, of a relationship with a close female friend", despite the universality of the experience.

Just Between Us then is a collection of both fiction and non fiction pieces about the "complexities of our...important female friendships; about their ongoing difficulties, their sudden complications, their endings" from twenty Australian women writers. Varying in tone from the confessional to the pragmatic, the lighthearted to the contemplative, some of these essays and short stories will resonate more strongly than others, but all offer a glimpse into the complicated intimacy of female friendship.

I have had friendships fade with time and distance as well as those that have ended abruptly for reasons I no longer remember, or never knew in the first place. Friendships that I have abandoned to protect myself, others for no good reason as all. To know that my experience is not unique, as illustrated in contributions like Jane Caro's The Girl Who Got Smaller and Clementine Ford's Girls Who Wear Gingham, is somehow reassuring. Of all twenty pieces, I found Nikki Gemmell's non fiction contribution 'What We Do', particularly insightful, despite its simplicity.

Just Between Us is an honest and engaging anthology reflecting on the joys and sorrows of friendship. Share it with a friend.