Amos and Emerson are the best of friends; everyone knows this. They are a model of male intimacy and understanding: confiding in each other, trusting each other, hugging each other (“real, loving hugs, clutches without irony”). Theirs is truly a friendship for the ages.
Or so it seems. For on the weekend of Emerson’s 52nd birthday, an occasion at the centre of Hal Ebbott’s probing and insightful debut novel, something happens that changes everything – and raises the question of whether we can ever truly know anyone.
Amos and Emerson met on the first day of college and bonded immediately despite their surface differences (Emerson is rich and handsome, Amos poor but clever). They have each fallen in love, married and had children, their families going through life together, twinned by the two men’s unbreakable bond. “You know,” observes Amos’s wife, Claire, “it’s a triumph of my marriage that I don’t envy what the two of you have.”
The story begins as Amos, Claire and their daughter, Anna, are driving to Emerson’s house in the country for a weekend of birthday celebrations. The mood is relaxed and carefree. Amos is pleased that a medical check has come back clear. But the reader is warned of the storm to come: “Each in their own way will think of this drive. They will marvel at its ordinariness, they will search it for signs. Was it already broken? Was it already lost?” Once they arrive there are further ill omens: a smashed wine bottle; a twisted ankle; a car crash. We are primed to expect catastrophe.
And while on the surface everything seems perfect for these rich and successful New Yorkers, underneath gripes and grievances bubble away. An evening meal can barely pass without some tetchiness. A tone might be considered “too performed”, a laugh too forced. Emerson is so irked by Amos’s childish manners that he nurses his displeasure late into the night (“his thoughts lingered on the way Amos had asked for dessert”). But it is not until a friendly game of tennis gets too heated, and Emerson, bested and embarrassed and feeling his age, retires to the house, that things go seriously wrong.
It is not easy to grasp why, and that is part of the novel’s ambiguous power. Emerson himself seems not to know what he is doing (“Am I? Am I going to do it?”). Without giving too much away, a confused sense of entitlement, damaged ego and midlife crisis leads Emerson to an unforgivable act. It is shocking, but not exactly surprising. Ebbott subtly unpicks the luscious tapestry he has so far woven, laying out the more selfish and messy emotions that underlie the characters’ relationships: Amos’s social climbing; Emerson’s need for validation. It is an impressively nuanced portrait.
Some aspects are less subtle. The key event is handled somewhat awkwardly, with a jarring attempt at black humour. More undermining is Ebbott’s habit later in the novel of painting Emerson as a black-and-white villain (he is likened to a “wolf” or a “reptile, born already with the memory, the knowledge of violence”), rather than the more ambiguously flawed fiftysomething he had appeared earlier. The style and tone is initially blandly self-confident (“The car flew on. Amos felt himself move with it – this smooth, edgeless life”) but becomes increasingly searching and introspective, with the best section, one from the victim’s viewpoint, taking on a disembodied, incantatory feel as words and phrases run around their head, becoming more and more meaningless: “What he did. What hedid. Whateedyd. Whut eed id.”
Among Friends is a bracingly honest and affectingly intimate depiction of abuse, family dynamics and self-deceit. It is sharply observed and psychologically astute, somehow both passionate and dispassionate, and it upends its characters’ lives so ruthlessly and revealingly that it is hard not to take pleasure in a false facade being finally smashed.
Among Friends is published by Picador (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.