America and it's writers have a long-time fascination with psychoanalysis. From Joan Didion's hard-nosed accounts of grief (The Year of Magical Thinking; Blue Nights) to Toni Morrison's exceptional exploration of the psychological toll of motherhood under oppression (Beloved) and post-9/11 authors like Franzen and Safran-Foer elucidating marriage and family life in a new millenia, the impacts of institutional changes on relationships and psychology have underpinned the American canon.
Hal Ebbott's Among Friends continues this tradition, charting the fractious, changing relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and- central to the novel- frenemies. Amos and Emerson are college friends tethered by a competitive friendship, a competitiveness that simmers quietly beneath their intertwined family lives. Over the course of a weekend getaway, tensions rise to the surface, ending in a shocking act that will change these relationships forever.
This is a novel that creeps along quietly; an ebb and flow of drama and relationship tics that crescendo into a powerful ending- when the truth is unleashed, all that's left in its wake is shrapnel.
Who will survive the ruin?
A compelling read for fans of Rachel Cusk's Second Place or Franzen's The Corrections.
