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_annabel 's review for:
Best of Friends
by Kamila Shamsie
I've like Shamsie ever since I read her take on Antigone. This one is about two teenage best friends, living in Karachi. One is rich and due to take over the family business, the other is middle-class, with very principled parents. I liked the story of their life in Karachi, then the plot all revolves around this one night, where the rich girl's boyfriend invites them on a drive with an older boy. He drives them all over the city, terrorising them, until he takes them back home. This feeling of powerlessness then drives their adult choices. Both of them become totally kick-ass women, the rich one is now insanely wealthy, running a VC business investing in new tech startups. Whilst the middle-class one was a human rights lawyer and now runs a civil rights charity. Then the older boy shows up again, and the middle-class one helps him, and the rich one takes revenge. This costs the middle-class one her job. I'm on the side of the rich one, but then I think if I could choose a super power it would be vengeance, so I get where she's coming from. And also the middle-class one owes her one, having let her take the fall for the whole terrorising car drive. Interesting book about friendship, revenge, power, morals, all the good things.