Friends: Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

How do you nurture friendships if you don’t feel that comes naturally to you? That’s the challenge a 40-year-old botanist takes on in Rules for Visiting, our March 2024 Introvert Book Club selection.

At the cusp of 40, university gardener May Attaway in Rules for Visiting frets that she has a dearth of friends.  Although she doesn’t feel actively unhappy about being single, socially adrift and living with her father, she launches a many-pronged inquiry into the nature of friendship.  Her quest doesn’t seem to get her anywhere until life itself brings her an answer.  I found this 2019 novel about an introvert by Jessica Francis Kane intriguing, though I’m not sure the lesson I took away was what the author intended.