Any relationship that starts in college and extends into early midlife needs to either bend or break. As people grow up, inevitably they must continually choose one another or to grow apart. Naima Coster's third novel, TAKE WHAT YOU CAN, explores these dynamics and more over the course of a years-long friendship.

Milly and Val meet when they are in college while on a study-abroad trip to Paris. When Milly decides to extend her time there by a few weeks and continue exploring France, she approaches Val to see if she'll accompany her. The two haven't really interacted much previously, but as the lone Black women in the group, Milly feels sure that they share some kind of kinship. The extent of their commonalities only grows once they get to know one another a bit more and learn that they are both motherless. Milly's single mother, who raised her in a one-bedroom Queens apartment, recently passed away due to cancer. And Val's mother, although still alive, might as well be dead. Val recently has decided to cut ties with the woman who never seemed to love her.

"[T]hose who seek out books featuring messy relationships and respond to fictional characters who are as flawed and human as real life will enjoy following Milly and Val’s individual and joint journeys through this fraught period in their lives..."

So perhaps it's inevitable that Milly and Val are receptive, even eager, to be taken under the wing of an American expat, Helene, who offers to show them the off-the-beaten-track sights she knows. Both women, even if they wouldn’t admit it to each other or themselves, see Helene as a kind of surrogate mother figure. By extension, they quickly develop a bond that resembles sisterhood.

Scenes from their times together in France are interspersed in Coster's narrative with scenes from the more recent past. It's been 14 years since their first trip to France, and their circumstances have changed dramatically since then. They have gotten married in the intervening years, and when they learn that they're expecting babies at around the same time, Milly encourages Val --- who has moved back home to North Carolina for a last-ditch (and unsuccessful) attempt to repair relations with her parents --- to move closer to her in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The two have recently reconciled after a rift, the cause of which remains a mystery for much of the novel. But they're eager to reestablish the closeness they once shared. 

However, Milly and Val underestimate how much of a gulf still lies between them and perhaps how much they needed a figure like Helene to smooth out their differences. From her humble beginnings, Milly --- thanks to her marriage and her career as a lifestyle influencer --- has achieved a level of wealth that she previously only could have imagined. Val, on the other hand, struggles to maintain a Big Apple lifestyle. 

The vast differences in their economic circumstances become especially stark once the babies are born. Milly can lean on her in-laws for help, as well as hire a full-time nanny and a night nurse. Val is left to care for her daughter almost entirely on her own, as her husband grows increasingly enmeshed in his new teaching job. Both women are keeping secrets from one another and holding on to a lot of baggage from their past. Is it time to admit that this friendship has run its course, or does it still have the potential to bend rather than break?

TAKE WHAT YOU CAN is a diffuse novel that touches on many different and relatable issues about growing into adulthood: how motherhood affects one's self-image, partner relationships and priorities; how money can warp reality both for those who have it in plenty and those who lack it; how becoming a parent without a good role model for parenthood can leave one feeling adrift and rudderless. The book's third-person perspective flows freely back and forth between Milly and Val's POVs, and it almost reads like an entwined pair of character studies. 

Those who are looking for a propulsive, plot-driven novel might not be fully satisfied, especially when it comes to the somewhat anticlimactic nature of their friendship rift, revealed near the end of the story. But those who seek out books featuring messy relationships and respond to fictional characters who are as flawed and human as real life will enjoy following Milly and Val’s individual and joint journeys through this fraught period in their lives --- and to imagine and debate what their next stage might look like.