Among Friends cover art

Among Friends

Perfect lives hide terrible secrets

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About this listen

A perfect world. But 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

Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense World Literature

Critic 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)
Impressively nuanced . . . 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.
Two dear male friends - after many years of friendship one of them does something unforgivable. Or is it? What makes this novel work is how much Ebbot leaves out. He never comes into a scene a word too soon or stays a sentence too late (Noami Alderman, Books of the Year, The Spectator)
It’s beautifully written and packs a huge emotional punch. I couldn’t put it down and kept thinking about it long after I finished. Brilliant
Ebbott's voice and language set the book apart from other family dramas
Ebbott is obviously a writer of lavish talents in all the old-school virtues of sentence-writing, paragraph-building, dialogue, characterisation, plot and pacing . . . as the properly page-turning repercussions continue, it’s not just the action that darkens, but the whole social setting
All stars
Most relevant
Apart from the victim of the crime, every character in this story is a terrible, shallow person.

heartbreaking

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First, I found a description deceiving. It says act of violence, but lets be specific, it is an act of sexual violence against a teenage girl.
Maybe the imagery and language is nice, but overall, I hated all the characters except for girls, who are teenagers, so they are as they are. It is not clear to me what the author was trying to do with this book. The situation described is more disgusting than violent, the rest of it is just annoying. And the two endings is a sign of laziness. You build up the characters throughout and then just drop, well, it could be like this or it could be like that? Ok, then just use a couple of sentences to tell the situation and then I can myself decide that yes, it could be like this and it could be like that, what's the point then for me to know about all these characters?
Performance was nice enough.

Quite irritating

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I didn’t know where this book was going and I’m not sure i fully understand the ending but this book is full of thoughts. It’s manipulative, it will frustrate you, at times make you angry yet you will be deeply invested in these characters and their relationships with one another. Excellently written and with Rebecca lowman’s perfect narration. I would tell you to listen to this.

Wowweeee

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Long winded self indulgent twaddle never getting to the point. Plastic characters mouthing platitudes. I was to bored listening to this that I had to stop halfway.

Terribly boring

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I really tried for 12 chapters, but just couldn't continue. There is an underlying interesting story, but the writing is convoluted and meanders out into far too many methaphors or endless imagery. The author seems to try too hard somehow. The languid style of the narration does not help.

Too much imagery and metaphors.

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