2 Girls 1 Book: Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu

Adolescence, art, ambition—and one intense female friendship

Welcome to the seventh edition of 2 Girls 1 Book, a monthly cross-post where Ochuko Akpovbovbo and Pandora Sykes chat about a new book via Google docs. This month we’re talking about Lonely Crowds, the debut novel from Stephanie Wambugu. As ever, we’d love to hear from you in the Comments! And for those of you who like to read along, next month we will be reading Endling, by Maria Reva.

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Ruth, the pensive daughter of Kenyan immigrants, and Maria, a self-possessed orphan, meet as scholarship students at a strict Catholic girls’ school in New England. Drawn into an intense friendship that blurs devotion, rivalry, and desire, their lives remain entwined as they move from adolescence into the charged New York art world of the 1990s. While Maria ascends as an artist and Ruth drifts toward a quieter, more conventional life, ambition and obsession strain their bond, pulling them together and apart until a final, devastating confrontation.

Hi Pandora! I’m so excited to talk about Lonely Crowds with you. It’s been all over my Instagram feed, and I really enjoyed it—maybe even loved it. From the moment I first heard about this book to the final page, I carried this nervous excitement that only comes when you realize you’ve been waiting for a book like this to exist: Black girlhood, proximity to privilege, complicated female friendships, immigration, success… I wanted all of it. And Lonely Crowds delivered. How did you find it?

I’m so glad you loved it because I know how excited you were to read it. I kind of went through different feelings with this book: wasn’t sure; then deeply moved; ending with impressed but not altogether satisfied. That’s interesting that it’s become a social media hit; I wonder if it’s because the book feels quite timeless. It has that thing that Luster has, where it’s sharp, even merciless. (“I didn’t like her but she was very friendly to me and had good recommendations for films,” Ruth says of a young woman she works with.) Then there were a few scenes that really moved me—like Ruth’s father screaming in the driveway, holding a brick, so sick of working so hard and never getting to Florida (a Florida vacation being a motif for success). That scene broke me. Ruth’s father is gentle and creative, and his daughter, likely influenced by her mother, really loathes that feminized side of him. Anyway, I digress. Thoughts?

This is a debut novel, and with splashy debuts like these, I’m always on the lookout for a hint of autofiction. I’ve been thinking about how, for many authors, a debut must feel like an outpouring of a lifetime of impressions and experiences, which can be difficult to contain on the page. Wambugu does a good job of keeping the narrative tight and pacey. There’s enough depth for the stories and characters to feel weighty without tipping into the overwrought—a balance that’s hard to pull off.

Yes, I agree it’s tight and pacey. I couldn’t always tell where it was going. Time also seemed to lag a little at university, then speed up afterwards. I also found her relationship with Ed a bit confusing.

The college section was the least interesting to me, as was her relationship with Ed. I wasn’t sure what those parts were meant to show us. Perhaps her inability to exist intimately with anyone besides Maria?

You know what this intense friendship really reminded me of? Another literary friendship and I can’t bloody remember which. It’s driving me crazy. Maybe The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li? It didn’t read hugely unusual to me anyway, that intense friendship made up of equal parts love and hate and a little lust, too.

The Book of Goose sounds right. If you enjoyed that, you really need to get around to reading the Neapolitan Quartet. I still can’t believe you haven’t!

I read one! A few summers ago. I just didn’t love it enough to read another.

Okay, fair. I’m drawn to themes of devotion, especially where platonic devotion shades into romance. From the start, Ruth is taken with Maria—her beauty, their sameness, their differences. I keep wondering if their bond would have taken the same shape if it hadn’t been forged in a space where they were so othered. Both of their home lives were chaotic, though in very different ways. Do you think Ruth’s isolated upbringing made her more susceptible to that kind of obsession?

Maria’s home life is heart-breaking. I was so pleased that Wambugu gave her this kind of innate confidence: Ruth notes that though she could smell Maria, though she would come to school dirty and hungry as her aunt was so sick, though the other girls would giggle and whisper—Maria despite all of this, was so sure of herself, so funny and arch and without any self-pity. That doesn’t mean we don’t pity her as a reader, her mother lost to mental illness, her aunt suffering in the same way, her awful careless callous father once she meets him. But still, I’m glad she made Maria such a fully realised person, even at a young age. Even if she then of course unravels—as does, perhaps by proxy, Ruth. (Thus challenging the idea of both the reader and Ruth that such a lonely neglected little girl could ever be so self-actualised. We have fallen into a trap, perhaps.)

The adults in this story all felt marked by absence. Maria’s tragedy is obvious, but even Ruth’s parents seemed missing in ways that left the girls exposed. I’m not sure I ever fully grasped the nuance of the relationship Wambugu was trying to capture with Ruth’s parents, but I did find them both fascinating characters. I’d actually love to read a book from Ruth’s mother’s perspective.

I think Ruth’s parents are just ground down by the American dream and not a particularly good match: Ruth’s mother, tough, not remotely tactile, is a carer for ageing, house-bound people. They are incontinent and racist. Her work drains her—she gets home and can’t even eat dinner with her daughter and Maria. Her father is softer, more emotional. He’s miserable, they both are, they give everything to Ruth… except warmth. Actually that’s not true: her father gives Ruth warmth and she despises him for it. Why do you think that is? And why do you think her mother is so affectionate with Maria, but never touched Ruth? (My god that’s a way to fuck your kid up.)

And then there’s the teacher, Mr. Fournier. What was that relationship, with him and Maria?

We are meant to believe it’s sexual, but I don’t think it is. I think he’s just one of those tragic, young-ish male figures: someone who goes into teaching so he can forge an outsize impression on malleable brains. For Maria, I think he was a father figure. His wife was weird, too—and also, crucially, very young.

Okay I’m glad we interpreted that the same. So smart of Wambugu to play on our suspicion. Back to Ruth and Maria. When they’re in college, Maria accuses Ruth of being sexually repressed. She suggests Ruth is in love with her but too afraid to admit it. I think there’s some truth to that, but maybe not the whole story. What do you make of it?

I don’t know. Ruth is convinced she is straight, Maria is convinced Ruth is in denial and is, like her, a lesbian—they do sleep together once. But I wonder if Maria was trying to ascribe certain labels to Ruth to make sense of her, but that the truth was—and Ruth would likely be the first to say this, she is brutal on herself and others—that Ruth lacks the vividness of Maria, she doesn’t have the same sharp outline. She is too porous. She’s kind of wishy washy but also furious, I think, even if it’s quite buried.

I almost wish Wambugu had kept their bond strictly platonic. I’m fascinated by the pathology of intense, unequal female friendships. That said, I appreciated that Ruth’s feelings for Maria were more complex than simple devotion. I especially liked the moments when she wished Maria harm, or quietly defied her.

Yeah, I get that. It would have been propulsive and persuasive enough without the women sleeping together. I’m not sure it was really necessary. Except, maybe the sapphic overtones suggest how slim the line between platonic and erotic friendship is?

You’re right, it does. What I found powerful about Ruth’s first-person POV is that we never fully understand Maria or her motivations. That mirrors Ruth’s own experience—perhaps because Maria was truly unknowable, but more likely because Ruth’s pedestal obscured whole parts of her. By the end, I was left with the sense that Maria was far more fragile than Ruth ever realized. It's possible that all along Ruth overestimated Maria’s strength and underestimated hers.

Maria is pretty broken. She’s had an atrocious start in life and she’s drawn to chaos, like that older student not-student and the acid. Urgh, that whole scene. As I mentioned, I think it’s a trap: Ruth, and us, the reader, think Maria is way more of a fully-formed person than she is. Maria needs Ruth probably more than Ruth needs Maria, but the dynamic never plays like that in appearance.

Unsurprisingly, both Ruth and Maria struggle in their adult relationships. Their actions towards the end could suggest that their feelings for each other were to blame, but I think their choices in partners were more revealing of who they were as individuals, rather than their relationship with each other. I found it easier to interpret them as characters when they weren’t together.

Maria’s partner (towards the end of the book, wife) was nurturing in many ways but also—and I loved that the author explored this—clearly addicted to being the saviour; she used care as a form of control, and her money as a sort of girdle on Maria. Ed’s motivation, I couldn’t say. At times I felt sorry for him but at other times I thought he was addicted to toxicity. James was fascinating—Ruth notes that he adores the extremities of life, the big epiphanies, and she is a milder character, a more cynical one, not nearly so charged with life as him. (He came across as pathetic and egotistical but also, quite interesting. I couldn’t see why he’d attach himself so instantly and completely to Ruth, except that he loves a wild idea.) Ruth is just quite apathetic. Maybe that’s why these strong personalities affix to her.

I also didn’t quite understand Ed’s attraction to Ruth, and I didn’t care for Maria’s partner either. She came across as insincere. And again, blindly devoted.

I enjoyed the book—there were some beautiful bits of writing—and it was so confident, with an almost violent clarity, but I found it quite slippery. Maybe that was the author’s intention. I think, given Wambugu’s confidence as a stylist, it probably was.

Agreed. I thoroughly enjoyed this book—perhaps even more with some distance. I can’t wait to read it again, and to see what Wambugu publishes next.