Hey, it's Impier's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Not to be annoyingly millennial,

but I don't really understand how previous generations kept in touch with their old friend groups

without the group chat. Is the one I have with my college buddies a bastion of deep

conversation and intelligent thought? No, of course

not. It's mostly dumb memes. But when life stuff does happen, well, I'm thankful it's there.

The novel Clutch follows a group of female friends throughout decades, and author Emily Nemmonds

uses the group chat as both a storytelling device and the thing that keeps these friends together.

Nemence talks at NPR's Juana Summers, but exploring the distance in long-term friendships after the break.

Friendships that last decades stretch across distance, careers, marriages, children, and sometimes there are long periods of silence.

Author Emily Nemens explores the complexities of female friendship in her new novel Clutch.

It follows five women who have known each other since college as they navigate the challenges of midlife.

Watching these women grow and get to know themselves and having our friendships wax and wane but really hold steady at their core is a thing that, you know, I just, I value it so highly and I wanted to think about the possibilities of that sort of beyond my own lived experience, but thinking about a group of

women who are trying to do that same work of holding on to one another.

The demands of life mean that the women are rarely all physically together.

They remain connected through their group chat.

I asked author Emily Nemons why she decided to use this medium as the thread that connects them.

Well, Anna, you're probably on a group chat, right? Many, many. So it felt very much like the

vernacular of now, and that was part of it. The other reason I wanted to use those text messages

is there's five people who are friends. They've only been in touch the last several years. So much of it has been by

text. And so that felt very true. And then I think the third reason that I really wanted to lean into

the text is there's five storylines and it's complicated. And I needed to do a little bit of

signposting to help the reader understand, okay, we're, you know, two hours later, we're two weeks

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