Romance, love, etc., etc., etc. I’m all for it, of course. My little valentines got books and chocolate this year (what’s better?) and Steve and I had a fabulous adventure, about which more soon. But Valentine’s Day isn’t what it was in my teens and twenties – a day of extreme relationship significance. It’s a day to celebrate love being in the world, which is great, but you know what else is great for that? Galentines Day, a holiday to celebrate female friendship, invented by the great Leslie Knope. And in the spirit of Galentines, here are three reads focusing on that very thing.

First of all, no Galentines reading roundup would be complete without Lumberjanes, the delightful comic created by ND Stevenson and Shannon Watters. For Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s sake, their camp motto is FRIENDSHIP TO THE MAX. And it really is to the max, as these five girls face down everything from anagrams to dinosaurs to possessed boy campers – together. Galentines to the max!

All right, this wasn’t my favorite book (it was all right, but didn’t wow me) but on the theme of female friendship Tracy Chevalier has a lot to say in A Single Thread. Violet is a “surplus woman” left bereft by the death of her fiance in World War I and living with her domineering mother. She escapes – unable to face another year in her mother’s house – and falls in with a company of Cathedral “broderers” (women who embroider kneelers and cushions for the local Cathedral). With their support, Violet builds a rich life for herself.

All right, Verily Anderson‘s World War II home front memoir isn’t just about female friendship, but my favorite parts of Spam Tomorrow were the parts that focused on her friendship with her dear friend Julie. Verily and Julie bond over motherhood and put their heads together to start an inn to make money while their husbands are off at war, and it’s one of the most hilarious things I ever read. (They’re wonderful mothers and devoted friends, but terrible hoteliers.) I can relate to the experience of teaming up with a bestie to get through life’s difficult moments together (hi, Rebecca!) and Anderson relates this precious friendship resource in a funny and life-affirming way.

What are your favorite books about female friendship?

At the beginning of this last (sniff) book in the Mapp and Lucia chronicles by E.F. Benson, we find Lucia on top of Tilling – where, she would tell you, she rightfully belongs. Recently wed to longtime bestie Georgie Pillson, ensconced as mistress of Mallards, and poised to ascend to the loftiest heights as the first woman to be Mayor of Tilling, it seems Lucia has finally achieved her dream of undisputed supremacy. But Tilling – unmistakably based on Benson’s own town of Rye – seethes with intrigue, and Lucia is in for a bumpy time.

A preview of the tribulations ahead comes when Lucia receives the shocking news that the Mayor of Tilling must have a Mayoress – a female helpmate who is obviously the First Lady of the town. Tilling isn’t sure what to do with this, because there’s never not been a Mayoress, but Lucia doesn’t have a wife to fill the role. She is instantly besieged by applications, mostly from husbands on behalf of their wives, for the post. The Padre applies on behalf of Evie; Mr. Wyse for Susan; Diva for herself; and Major Benjy lets her know that if she approached “Liz” in the “proper spirit,” his wife might be induced to accept the post. With Georgie’s snarky assistance, Lucia sifts through the applications and drafts tactful letters to the rejected aspirants, until finally Georgie begs her to tip her hand.

“Lucia, it’s too ridiculous of you to pretend to be absorbed in your sketch,” he said impatiently. “What are you going to do?”

Lucia appeared to recall herself from the realms of peace and beauty.

“Elizabeth will be my Mayoress,” she said calmly. “Don’t you see, dear, she would be infinitely more tiresome if she wasn’t? As Mayoress, she will be muzzled, so to speak. Officially, she will have to perform the tasks I allot to her. She will come to heel, and that will be very good for her. Besides, who else is there? Diva with her tea-shop? Poor Susan? Little mouse-like Evie Bartlett?”

“But can you see yourself approaching Elizabeth in a proper spirit?”

Lucia gave a gay trill of laughter.

“Certainly I cannot. I shall wait for her to approach me. She will have to come and implore me. I shall do nothing till then.”

Georgie pondered on this extraordinary decision.

“I think you’re being very rash,” he said. “And you and Elizabeth hate each other like poison–“

“Emphatically no,” said Lucia. “I have had occasion sometimes to take her down a peg or two. I have sometimes felt it necessary to thwart her. But hate? Never. Dismiss that from your mind. And don’t be afraid that I shall approach her in any spirit at all.”

You can see where this goes. There is a standoff, of course, and it ends with Elizabeth approaching Lucia to ask for the appointment – just as Lucia predicted. (While largely evenly matched, Lucia tends to be the more strategic, which accounts for her more frequent victories over Elizabeth.) Elizabeth throws herself into her role as helper and encourager to “Worship,” as she now calls Lucia – at first ostentatiously and later sarcastically. Lucia, meanwhile, throws herself into municipal affairs until she becomes a bore to everyone around her. Even Georgie grows sick of her local government obsession and constant protestations of overwork, and escapes more and more frequently to Riseholme, where he renews his friendship with Olga Bracely, the famous prima donna (leading to a hilarious supposition by Tilling that Georgie and Olga are being improper – nothing could be further from the truth). Lucia and Georgie meet “Poppy,” the Duchess of Sheffield, through Olga, leading to another hilarious misunderstanding in which Poppy assumes that Georgie is the Mayor of Tilling – not Lucia – and invites the Mayor to stay at her castle, only to dismiss Lucia when she realizes her mistake. Lucia, as always, finds a way to salvage the situation to her own benefit.

It was only by strong and sustained effort that Olga restrained herself from howling with laughter. She hadn’t been singing the prayer from Lucrezia this time, but Les feux magiques, by Berlioz; Lucia seemed quite unable – though of course she had been an agitated listener – to recognize the prayer when she heard it. But she really was a wonderful woman. Who but she would have had the genius to take advantage of Poppy’s delusion that Georgie was the Mayor of Tilling? Then what about Lucia’s swift return from the Castle? Without doubt Poppy had sent her away when she saw her female, beardless guest, and the clever creature had made out that it was she who had withdrawn as Poppy was so unwell, with a gallery of photographs to prove she had been there. Then she recalled Lucia’s face when she entered the garden-room a few minutes ago, the face of a perfect lady who, unexpectedly, returns home to find a wanton woman, bent on seduction, alone with her husband. Or was Georgie’s evident relief at her advent funnier still? Impossible to decide, but she must not laugh till she could bury her face in her pillow. Lucia had a few sandwiches to refresh her after her drive, and they went up to bed. The two women kissed each other affectionately. Nobody kissed Georgie.

Lucia’s ingenuity will be tested still more severely, though – and it’s all down to Poppy, the Duchess. Not learning from her previous efforts to annex the aristocracy (in Lucia in London), Lucia lets it get around Tilling that she and the Duchess are great friends. When the Duchess unexpectedly appears on Diva Plaistow’s doorstep and fails to recognize Lucia – in front of Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, disastrously – it looks as if Lucia’s reign has finally come to an end. But while Lucia may be down occasionally, it would be unwise to count her out. This is a woman, after all, who survived being swept out to sea on a dining-room table, with Elizabeth Mapp as fellow castaway. Lucia will go on.

This is my journey with Mapp and Lucia coming to an end, or at least an end to the first part. I have the show still to watch (starring the marvelous Anna Chancellor as Lucia) and there will be re-reads. But you only meet new friends once for the first time. And Lucia and company saw me through dark times in the world – an inept federal government; a global pandemic; most recently, a reckless state government that seems bent on undoing all of the progress we’ve made over the last decade and putting my kids at risk in school. It’s hard to live in 2021; we take our joy where we have it, and Lucia and Mapp’s deliciously malicious social war has been a lifeline for me.

Are you an E.F. Benson fan?

The Worshipful Lucia, the penultimate novel in the “Mapp and Lucia” series, finds Lucia facing down a fiftieth birthday and wondering what she is doing with her life. Yes, she’s the Queen – disputed, but Queen nonetheless – of Tilling society, and she has her books and her musical nights with her dear friend Georgie (usually, anyway; Georgie has vanished from Tilling’s sight and Lucia is vaguely concerned). But what legacy will she leave? Pondering these weighty matters, Lucia comes across an article about Dame Catherine Winterglass, who started investing at 45 (only five years younger than Lucia!) and died at 55, fabulously wealthy.

She let the paper drop, and fixed her gimlet eyes on the busy of Beethoven, for this conduced to concentration. She did not covet yachts and deer forests, but there were many things she would like to do for Tilling: a new organ was wanted at the church, a new operating theatre was wanted at the hospital and she herself wanted Mallards. She intended to pass the rest of her days here, and it would be wonderful to be a great benefactress to the town, a notable figure, a civic power and not only the Queen (she had no doubt about that) of its small social life. These benefactions and the ambitions for herself, which she had been unable to visualise before, outlined themselves with disctinctness and seemed wreathed together: the one twined round the other.

Inspired by Dame Catherine, Lucia decides to play the stock market – and where Lucia leads, Tilling follows. Lucia quickly makes a bundle (mostly just by following her broker’s advice, although she allows Tilling to form the impression that she is a financial genius) and the ladies and gentlemen of Tilling quickly follow suit – except for Lucia’s archrival, Elizabeth Mapp, of course.

Elizabeth rose. Lucia’s lecture was quite intolerable. Evidently she was constituting herself a central bureau for the dispensing of financial instruction. So characteristic of her: she must boss and direct everybody. There had been her musical parties at which all of Tilling was expected to sit in a dim light and listen to her and Georgie play endless sonatas. There had been her gymnastic class, now happily defunct, for the preservation of suppleness and slimness in middle-age, and when the contract bridge came in she had offered to hold classes in that. True, she had been the first cause of the enrichment of them all by the purchase of Siriami, but no none could go on being grateful for ever, and Elizabeth’s notable independence of character revolted against the monstrous airs she exhibited, and inwardly she determined that she would do exactly the opposite of anything Lucia recommended.

I don’t need to tell you how it goes. Lucia (at her broker’s advice, but she conveniently leaves off that detail) sells off the first stock she purchased – the aforementioned Siriami – at a tidy profit. The rest of Tilling follows along, and makes money themselves. Only Elizabeth and her besotted new husband, Major Benjy Mapp-Flint, hang onto the stock and lose money – with the result that they can no longer afford to live at Mallards, and have to sell it, finally, to Lucia. As you can imagine, this is a singularly painful pill for Elizabeth to swallow.

Eventually, Lucia’s investing bender fizzles out, as most of her crazes do – leaving her significantly richer than she was (and she was already quite rich). She sets about spending her newfound wealth, not only on Mallards for herself, but on the organ and operating theatre she contemplated for Tilling – and other projects too. Elizabeth has decided that Benjy should have a position in Tilling befitting his status as her husband and persuades him to run for Town Council (with an eye to keeping rates low; this is before they sell Mallards to Lucia) but Benjy, unwilling to sacrifice his golf afternoons to an arduous campaign, convinces Elizabeth to run instead. Naturally, this means Lucia has to run too, and both suffer humiliating defeats. But one thing about Lucia: she is never down and out for long, and she quickly finagles her way into first an informal role in the municipal government, then is co-opted onto the Town Council, and ends the book triumphantly as Mayor-elect. Of course.

There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned, no-holds-barred Tilling social brawl to lift the spirits. Lucia and Elizabeth are both snobs – it’s true – and there’s a cathartic delight in watching them occasionally taken down a peg, but there’s just as much delight in watching them (especially the crafty Lucia) rise above and triumph in the end. Each has her moments of humbling, and each has her moments of victory. That’s the real joy of the Mapp and Lucia books; the two combatants are so evenly matched that no one ever stays on top for long, and the fun of watching the battles rage goes on. The books are witty, they are sparkling, and they are surprisingly touching.

Are you a fan of Mapp and Lucia?