Description

A perfect world. A betrayal that could shatter everything.

‘Every sentence keeps you hanging in the air, waiting for the next punch to the gut’ – Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

‘A hard diamond of a novel . . . I have not stopped thinking of it since’ – Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters

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?

Hal Ebbott’s Among Friends is a razor-sharp look at the dark side of American wealth, the brittle foundations of friendship, and the desperate lengths we go to to keep our secrets hidden.

‘Bracingly honest and affectingly intimate’ The Guardian
‘Assured, acutely perceptive and beautifully written’ Financial Times
‘Packs a huge emotional punch. I couldn’t put it down’ Daily Mail
‘I’m already begging my friends to read it so we can discuss the ending’ ELLE
‘Like a cold gin and tonic on a hot day’ The Washington Post

Publisher Review

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 In refined prose that feels like a throwback to mid-20th-century psychological realism, Ebbott lays bare the many ways in which the families harm each other as each character seeks to protect the status quo . . . It’s an alluring accomplishment — Publishers Weekly Ebbott’s voice and language set the book apart from other family dramas * NPR *