Throughout the year I found the bonds between the main characters and their friends in both Beloved by Toni Morrison and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. 

In Beloved, Sethe isolates herself from everyone she has known for many years. However, once her dead child returns from the dead and begins to steal her energy, her friends don’t hesitate to come to her aid, even though she was responsible for the child’s death. Through their support alone (as none of them had ghost-hunting expertise) her child was separated from her and she was able to work through the trauma and guilt she felt about her past actions. 

In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Yanina describes her experience working to “solve” the mysterious murders happening in their rural town. She then reveals to her friends that she had been the one causing these violent deaths, and shockingly, they agree to help her escape. Due to her friend’s loyalty, Yanina is able to escape the police and live with a friend of hers in Poland.

In my life, I find myself having anxious thoughts about my friends deciding never to speak to me again over things like forgetting to text them back, scheduling conflicts, or even simple differences in opinions. In both of these books these people –while they had their reasons and motives– killed someone/s, and their friends still supported them when they needed it. If Sethe and Yanina can rely on their friends to help them in their most desperate times after committing one of the evil acts known to man, I know I can trust my friends to have my back if I miss their calls or have trouble scheduling a get-together.