Neither friend [in The Friends] is very endearing; one a rather priggish girl from a proud West Indian family, the other a sluttish, thieving but ever loyal and loving drudge struggling to keep her parentless family together. Set in Harlem against a background of prejudice (between the varying strata of coloured families) and violence, the girls are growing to maturity with the usual problems of adolescence magnified by the difficulties of the society in which they live. The style of writing is idiomatic and rather difficult in its unfamiliarity, the setting and life style is alien—one is conscious of being an outsider to the Harlem community—and this leads to difficulty in identifying with the characters despite—perhaps even because—of the author's very real sympathy with them.