Friendship and obsession are at the core of Stephanie Wambugu’s debut novel, Lonely Crowds. The book’s protagonist and narrator, Ruth, becomes almost instantaneously bound to Maria upon their first encounter as little girls, and through the book, we see this relationship and their selfhoods evolve. First in the suffocating classrooms of the Catholic school they attend, then through their rarefied liberal arts education at university, and finally in thehellip;

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