Lavery, a former voice of the “Dear Prudence” advice column at Slate, continues to share keen insights into the human psyche in a touching—and often hilarious—portrait of a woman heading into her 60s without the support and companionship of the nine best friends she’s lost to death or misunderstandings (more than one of these) over the years. At 57, Barbara is a twice-divorced mother of one son (with whom she has a contentious relationship) and works in an upscale food market in Brooklyn. She’s been confronted, recently, with a list of relationship-based grievances compiled by a purported friend, which launches her into protracted musings over why she hasn’t really had a best friend since the death of her last one more than 15 years prior. (Startlingly, in the years leading up to her death from cancer, that woman removed Barbara from the “casserole list” of friends providing her with meals and comfort.) Mining her memories for clues about what went wrong, Barbara sets out to find a new BFF. Peppered with acerbic observations about the vagaries of others, her unfiltered narrative covers issues ranging from whether a potential younger new friend is age-appropriate to how to deal with the information that the widower of the friend who dismissed her years ago is now remarrying. The resolution of Barbara’s quest for connection is not linear, but readers are treated to her thoughts about religion, neighbors, aging, and cooking. (The assembly directions for a double-crusted bitter greens pie called erbazzone seem impossible to ignore.) Barbara’s prickly personality illuminates Lavery’s exploration of who is worthy of our love and attention and why friendship is so often a zero-sum game.