Among Friends
“Among Friends, Hal Ebbott’s first novel, opens with college classmates, Amos and Emerson, meeting for the first time. Right away you get a sense of the differences, in personality and privilege. Years later, the two men, who have remained friends, meet up for a weekend in the country with their wives and their teenage daughters. The tensions, the expectations, the unspoken loyalties, and underlying emotions all come to a head with one event (no spoilers here) that goes on to set everyone’s lives on a very different path, and bring back memories of past drama and trauma.
Among friends is a beautifully written novel of friendship, marriage and family, and while the marriages and the familial relationships play an important part, the story is at its very strong core, a story of male friendship. It is hard to say much about the plot without giving too much away, and the book is at times a true page turner, but suffice to say that if you like a story with underlying tensions and implosions rolling right under the surface, then this is a book for you. “ - Isabella
For thirty years, Amos and Emerson have built a life others envy. Their wives are close, their teenage daughters have grown up together, their days are passed in the comfortable languor of New York City wealth. Their bond seems unbreakable.
This weekend, however, something is different. After gathering for Emerson’s birthday at his country home, celebration gives way to old rivalries and resentments. When tensions erupt, their finely made world is ruptured in one shocking act of violence.
In its wake, each must ask: when your world collapses, what — and who — will you sacrifice to survive?
