Friend to Friend: Letters Only a Women Could Write

The best part about this delightful compilation is the wide variety of correspondents Wyse (Women Make the Best Friends) has chosen. The collection is composed of short letters from 40 well-known women including Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt and Virginia Woolf that were written, in most cases, to female friends and relatives. Wyse divides the book into celebration, consolation, appreciation and ""ties that bind"" and accompanies each section with a brief biographical essay that is sometimes overly flowery and speculative. Some letters reveal interesting, unknown aspects of the authors, such as writer Jane Bowles's haunting awareness of her failing memory and philosopher Ayn Rand's emotional insecurities. Others, however, for example Joan Crawford's thank-you note and poet H.D.'s message of sympathy to Robert Duncan, are so short and uninformative, why Wyse selected them is a mystery. Color illustrations not seen by PW. (May)