The Enchantment of Girlhood Friendship in The Miraculous Sweetmakers by Natasha Hastingss by Natasha

Natasha Hastings has written a brilliant blog for us about girlhood friendships, as they appear in her books and in her own life.

The Enchantment of Girlhood Friendship in The Miraculous Sweetmakers

While writing my magical-historical Middle Grade trilogy, The Miraculous Sweetmakers, I wanted the joy of girlhood friendship to form its heartbeat. I believe this particular bond carries with it a deep enchantment: a fierce love filled with secret worlds, languages, and jokes, as well as care, kindness, ambition, rivalry, anxiety, passion, and hope.

From time to time, a message inscribed on a memorial bench re-circulates around the internet. It reads: ‘we were girls together.’ This seems to encapsulate for so many what this particular dynamic feels like, whether in the seventeenth century like my main characters in The Miraculous Sweetmakers, Thomasina and Anne, or the twenty-first. Girlhood friends are each other’s historians and confidants. We often experience our first injustices, triumphs, and loves at around the same time, relying on one another for support – as well as sometimes navigating complexities within our own connections. While talking with a friend recently, we agreed that girlhood feels like a culture. A way of being. A vibe. I wanted to capture this sensation in my trilogy.

I have retained several close friends from my own girlhood, whom I met between the ages of two and sixteen. Looking through one of my old diaries recently, I found a passage where I’d written down what I thought were the best qualities of these friends: words used include brave, funny, clever, kind, thoughtful, and imaginative. I wanted Thomasina and Anne to embody the intricate brilliance of those I have loved for years. After leaving school, I was lucky to forge more bonds and continue my journey of girlhood friendship for a little while longer. The street where Thomasina and Anne live in The Sea Queen (the second in the trilogy) is named after my old college for this reason.

Girlhood friendship gave me vital lessons on how to love and be loved, as well as how to show up for people – all of which I needed to be able to write The Miraculous Sweetmakers. It taught me to keep a list in my phone of my friends’ favourite flowers; to play with a pal’s hair while we chatted the other day, because she said it comforted her; to recently check in on a young adult at the train station who was sitting alone while her two friends talked about her nearby. A fortnight ago, I was enchanted to discover that the lessons of girlhood friendship transcends generations. I recently met up with my godson’s wonderful great-grandmother for lunch, having met her only once before, and we were soon talking as if we’d known one another for years. I feel that, as well as sharing similar values and having a lot in common, this was because we had lived through girlhood, and so knew how to be with one another. I came away feeling that familiar warmth I’d experienced as a child.

I believe my girlhood friends and I love each other the same as we did as children – yet, due to changing life circumstances, we are no longer granted what felt like an endless expanse of time together we once shared. What was once co-creating fairy houses out of twigs and leaves has now become talking for hours over brunch; what was once me scribbling down passages for a friend to read on the bus every so often has turned into phone calls and messages saying ‘I knew you’d do it’ whenever I get a publishing deal. What was once giggling together about people we liked has become hampers delivered after breakups, as well as wedding invitations.

While writing about the bond between Thomasina and Anne, I therefore did my very best to cherish this fleeting yet magical time. Having written The Frost Fair, The Sea Queen, and now the third book in my trilogy, I’ve been able to do as Anaïs Nin says, and taste life twice. In The Sea Queen, I’ve tried to show how girlhood friendship is as powerful during smaller, everyday instances as it is during bigger moments (in this book’s case, a magical mystery waiting to be solved). Thomasina painstakingly sews Anne a pouch to keep a book in for her birthday; the girls regularly hug each other and hold hands for their own or the other’s comfort; and both stay up for hours, chatting on their rooftop.

At one point in The Sea Queen, Thomasina and Anne reflect on all they have achieved after setting up a business together:

Anne hooked her arm into Thomasina’s so that they were striding together. ‘Look at our shop!’ she laughed, pointing back at the Burgess & Hawke’s sign. ‘We’re doing it!’.

I hope this excerpt demonstrates Anne’s almost feverish optimism, arising from both her own ambitions being realised, as well as the knowledge that she loves and is loved by her best friend. Their relationship in The Miraculous Sweetmakers is in great part a testament to the girlhood friends who made me the author I am today. To them, I say: thank you. I love you so much, and always will.

Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.