Among Friends

(Paperback)

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Description

Who would you choose to believe Amos and Emerson have been friends for thirty years. Despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, the two men now form an enviable portrait of middle age: their wives are friends, their teenage daughters have grown up together, their days are passed in the comfortable languor of New York City wealth. They share an unbreakable bond, or so they think. Now, it is Emerson's birthday, and Amos and his family are heading upstate to celebrate in Emerson's beautiful home. Over the course of the weekend, rivalries emerge and tensions escalate, until a final shocking act of violence threatens to tear the two families' finely made world apart. In its wake, each of them must choose: between whom and what they love most.

Reviews

A wonderful, sly and subtle novel. Every sentence keeps you hanging in the air, waiting for the next punch to the gut. Wow. -- Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
In the way that a forceful intelligence or an infectious voice or a fresh vision can alter how we observe and answer the world, Among Friends brought me into its cool environs and made me engage my days differently. It's no small accomplishment for a first novel, or for any novel. -- Richard Ford
Among Friends is a powerful, elegant novel that offers unsparing and lyrically rendered insight into the lives of others -- Claire Lombardo, the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Among Friends is smart and nuanced about the damage people are prepared to endure in the name of loyalty and comfort. The deep desire to only hear the story we want, or need, to be true. I was completely drawn in -- Claire Lynch, author of A Family Matter
Among Friends is a masterly debut. Hal Ebbott ranges from the most exquisite, Jamesian discriminations to the graspable, all-American solidities of Updike and Richard Yates. This is a writer to watch, with excitement and the highest expectations -- John Banville, author of The Sea
The violation that befalls these two families has the unalterable destiny a Greek dramatist like Sophocles might have imagined. Hal Ebbott has written an exquisitely crafted family tragedy. -- John Irving

Author Bio

Hal Ebbott is a writer living in New York. Among Friends is his first novel.