It's been said that friends are the family we choose. The difficulties sometimes posed by those choices are the subject of Hal Ebbott's debut novel, Among Friends, a sensitive, intelligent psychological drama that tests the ties of longtime friendships and plunges two families into crisis.
The novel begins in an idyllic setting, as Amos, a therapist, his physician wife, Claire, and their 16-year-old daughter, Anna, arrive at an upstate New York vacation home. The home belongs to Amos's college roommate and best friend of more than 30 years, Emerson, a lawyer, his wife, Retsy, and their daughter, Sophie, who is Anna's age. They've gathered on a gorgeous October weekend to celebrate Emerson's 52nd birthday. The perfection of this serene outer world is undermined that weekend by an incident that's known only to two members of the collective at the time. How that incident becomes known to others and the implications of that knowledge propel the novel's second half.
As Ebbott patiently but determinedly reveals, the glittering surface of the "smooth, edgeless life" of privilege these characters inhabit conceals a set of relationships that are far more fragile than any of their participants can imagine. Their choices may imperil not only the ties of long and deep friendships, but the very existence of their "dense, dependable" family lives. Ebbott's prose is both elegant and seemingly effortless. The novel shifts perspective smoothly among its sextet of characters while maintaining its acuity in examining the desires and motivations of each. Among Friends is a sophisticated exploration of some fraught and challenging subjects that exerts an insistent pull on both the mind and heart. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer