In Brief
It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her scruffy house in Fulham she observes two young women with small children, separate — struggling and plainly lonely — and decides to invite them in and see what happens. What happens is that these very different women, Eleanor, Paula and Lindsay, are joined by three more: Jules, Blaise and Karen. Together they make up one retired professional, one budding DJ, one frazzled wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. Slowly, gradually and despite vast differences in background and circumstance, a group forms: a sorority of sorts, and a circle of friends.

It is only when Paula meets Jackson, an enigmatic, powerful and seductive man, that the bonds that have been so closely forged are put to the test; jealousies, rivalries, even infidelities threaten everything the women have between them, even their Friday nights. Harmony is eventually restored, but not without its price: Paula must confront some unsavory truths about her relationships; Karen must completely reevaluate her priorities in life; Blaise must meet new challenges; Eleanor must admit she needs help at home; Jules has some growing up to do; and Lindsay needs a little love in her life … With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.

For Discussion

• Toby is angry with Paula ‘for something he couldn’t put his finger on’ (p.7)
• Why is Toby so angry? How and why does his anger change towards the end of the book?
• ‘Perhaps [Karen] should talk to Eleanor, or at least talk her way through the confusion of her thoughts in Eleanor’s presence’ (p.208)
• What role does talking play in Friday Nights? Do different characters — men, women and children — have different approaches to communication?
• ‘“Can’t a man give you something to believe in?”
  “No”’
  Paula’s boss is unequivocal about men’s role in women’s lives. (p.35) Would you say that Joanna Trollope shares this view in Friday Nights? Is this a cynical book? Or a feminist one? Or simply refreshingly realistic?
• Consider the following passages. Each is written from the standpoint of a third person narrator, yet look at any variations in tone, language, style and perspective. What is Joanna Trollope aiming to achieve here and elsewhere in Friday Nights? Is it a successful technique?
• ‘Toby kicked one foot clumsily against the other. Then he went out of his mother’s bedroom and banged the door shut and leaned against it. This door, his mother’s bedroom door was one of only a few doors in the flat. There was just that door, and the front door and the door of the bathroom. The rest was just space. Upwards, outwards, sideways. Just space.’ (p.7)
• ‘Many women – most women, even – would seize the day and the scrubbing brush and hang new curtains. Eleanor was not such a woman. New curtains would do nothing for her except cause great irritation. No, she realised … the adjustment to this new stage of life was not going to come from without. It was going to have to come from within. She was going to have to look at life quite differently; she was going to have to look at people, at types of people, she had never looked at before. She was going to have to — as a human being without the restful authenticity conferred by an acknowledged professional position — go out there and make friends — quite naked, as it were.’ (p.72)
• ‘Rose and Poppy shared a bedroom at the top of their house. It was a tall, thin house … and the girls’ room was the highest of all. Their father had painted a landscape round the walls — forests and a castle and jungle beasts and a unicorn — and a starry sky on the ceiling. When they were older, he said, he would replace the unicorn and the tigers with rock stars and cover the night sky with psychedelic patterns. Rose said what was psychedelic and Lucas said intoxicating and narcotic, and Rose said what was intoxicating and narcotic, and Lucas said drunk and drugged and both girls fell on the floor squealing and rolled their eyes.’ (pp.61-62)
• ‘Jules said nothing. She lay on the dirty carpet with her phone to her ear and her eyes closed and smiled. It didn’t matter. Two hundred quid didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She had done two hours and she had done good.’ (p.93)
• Lindsay feels she needs to apologise for Jules who ‘seemed to have inherited her parents’ taste for a wild and irresponsible life’ (p.13)
  Were you surprised by Jules by the end of the book? Does she change, and if so, how and why?
• Consider the various father figures in Friday Nights. Are there any ‘good fathers’? How do they compare to the mothers?
• Does Eleanor’s lack of experience with men account for her level-headedness, or vice versa? Are sense and romance always mutually exclusive in Friday Nights?
• ‘When it came to malevolence, Blaise thought, women were often the worst. Women could be both subtle and ingenious in their spite’ (p. 53)
  Is Blaise proven right in the context of the novel? Do you agree with her?
• Why does Jackson’s appearance on the scene cause such chaos? Does he create problems or just bring them to the surface? Ultimately, is he what everyone in the book needed?
• ‘It was clear to Rose that this money thing was a burden to her mother but also that it gave her a kind of power’ (p.64)
  How important is money in the book, both in terms of driving the plot and affecting the characters? Is it a force for good or bad, or both?
• ‘Toby thought Eleanor liked being in her own house’ (p.22)
  Who else needs their personal space in Friday Nights? Why does it matter so much?
• Joanna Trollope has said that if she were asked to write a social code of conduct she would emphasise that with rights come responsibilities. Who carries the responsibilities in this book? And who enjoys the freest rights? What happens when the two don’t go hand in hand?
• What did you make of Fiona’s arrival in the book? What are her motivations in helping Paula?
• ‘[Eleanor] was going to have to –  as a human being without the restful authenticity conferred by an acknowledged professional position – go out there and make friends – quite naked, as it were.’ (p.72)
  Why naked? Consider the various ways that women dress themselves up in Friday Nights. What do they have to hide? Why is the ‘outward self’ (p.73) so important? Can it be misleading?
• Work-life balance is a major theme in Friday Nights. Who gets it right?
• Look at Eleanor and Paula’s phone conversation on pp.148-150 with particular reference to both women’s attitude, self expression and self confidence. Could each woman be considered representative of her generation? If so, how exactly? Why does Paula care what Eleanor thinks of her?
• Joanna Trollope researched Friday Nights by going to nightclubs and talking to DJs. Does she pull it off?
• ‘It was odd, Paula thought, how much more attracted she was to men with a sulphuric whiff of danger about them than to safe men’ (p.133)
  Does Paula’s attitude surprise you? Why is she so much more attracted to ‘bad’ men, do you think?
• Why does Karen think that life can leave the modern woman ‘inconsolable’ (p.221)? Does it have anything to do with the issue of ‘female entitlement’ that Eleanor identifies on p.311? Is ‘female entitlement’ at the heart of all the problems in Friday Nights? Why should some women prove more susceptible to it than others?

Further Reading
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
Blenheim Orchard by Tim Pears
The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
How to be Good by Nick Hornby
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

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