The Gospel According to Drew Barrymore

by Pippa Wright

Friendship is like a shark: it has to keep moving forwards to survive.

Esther and Laura have been best friends since they were seven, when Esther was chubby and Laura was already perfect. So much has changed since then - school, boyfriends, drink, experimental hair-dye, university, jobs, London, babies - and their friendship has changed just as much, but they are still close, still inextricably linked to one another.

So when Esther is told that Laura has gone missing, she leaves everything behind - including her husband and small child - to fly to San Francisco and trace her friend's last movements. All she has is an email from Laura: 'I'm channelling Drew Barrymore, as ever. The Gospel, right?'

In trying to understand why Laura has disappeared, and what on earth Drew Barrymore has to do with it, Esther needs to look back. Back at the secrets woven into their friendship and the truths she's avoided facing for so long.

• ISBN10: 1447238362
• ISBN13: 9781447238362
• Publish Date: 26 March 2015
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Out of Print: 4 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Pan Books
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

The Gospel According to Drew Barrymore is Pippa Wright’s fourth, long-awaited novel (having been delayed last year – boo!) and as soon as I heard about it, I was quite excited to read it. I’m not a massive Drew Barrymore fan (I can take her or leave her and don’t know the last film of hers I watched) but I love, love, love books with a theme. Especially when that theme is worshipping a pretty awesome actress. Who better to draw inspiration from than Drew, who’s a fairly impressive person?

Another big plus for the novel was the nostalgia factor. I was born in 1990, and I am very much a 90s kid, with cassette tapes and walkmans and Nokia mobile phones which were the iPhones of today, and to wander back through that time and delve into Esther and Laura’s friendship was amazing. Friendships are different nowadays, at least I think so. There aren’t really any people I can call a friend, never mind a best friend, that’s just always been something I don’t excel at, not helped by the fact we moved to Europe in 2003, cutting me off from all of my friends at the time and it’s pretty hard to make friends when you don’t speak the language of the country you now live in. But, I’m okay that way.

Now that that means I don’t like to read about a good friendship book, because I do. I LOVE THEM. There’s something about reading about girls who meet and bond over an owl missing its head, as they argue about who is Gertie from ET (Confession: I have never seen ET). From then on, Esther and Laura were there for each other for everything and we get to see that as the novel progresses, with the two storylines. The first is Esther in the present day, in first person, trying to find Laura who has gone missing in California (no, not in a Gone Girl way, though I was worried for a millisecond) and then we go through Drew Barrymore’s filmography and see how it relates to the two girls – growing up, getting first boyfriends, falling out, making up, we get to see their friendship in every stage, the good and the bad. It’s hard to quantify their friendship, though, because it’s not quite the toxic relationships from say Something Borrowed from Emily Giffin, but nor is it perfect. There’s ructions and arguments and resentment on both sides. But, all that’s really important to know is that when Laura needs Esther, Esther is there, and vice versa. Laura might have been a touch selfish, and perhaps not put as much in to the relationship as Esther, but she wasn’t awful and you can tell that they both really care about each other, even at the bad times.

The Gospel According To Drew Barrymore is one of the most compelling books I’ve read for a while, especially in the Chick Lit genre, which hasn’t been good to me so far this year. I really do think more authors should write books about friendship because I love them so much, and they should also set those books in the 90s because the nostalgia just blows my mind and makes me miss simpler times, before mobile phones that are like spaceships ;). Pippa Wright is a fantastic writer and to see how much her writing has evolved since Lizzy Harrison is so, so great. I loved the flashbacks, I loved the first- and third-person narratives, and I loved unravelling the friendship between Esther and Laura. It’s easy to look at and judge someone else’s friendship but until you’re in that situation, you can’t really judge. Sometimes you have to bite your tongue and just be there for your friend, be their constant, when they need you even if it isn’t always reciprocated. It’s nice to be reminded every now and again that friendship isn’t all happiness and roses and butterflies, sometimes it’s simply sticking chewing gum on a broken owl, to make sure it’s never found out that he’s really headless.