cover image How Close We Come: A Novel about Women's Friendships

How Close We Come: A Novel about Women's Friendships

Susan S. Kelly. Banks Channel Books, $10.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-889199-00-9

When Ruth Campbell packs up her two little children and drives away from her husband and ""close-to-downtown has-been neighborhood"" of Greensboro, N.C., she inadvertently shatters the world of her best friend and next-door neighbor, Priscilla (Pril) Henderson. In this short, reflective, smoothly written first novel, a 1997 Carolina Novel Award winner, Kelly uses a painful divorce to examine the close friendship between Ruth, an awakening feminist increasingly unhappy with her dependence, and Pril, a writer contented with her lot as a wife. Ruth's husband has Pril subpoenaed as his witness during the custody trial, and Pril waits in vain for a sign from her friend as to what she should say. Tension mounts between Pril and her husband, and the pull of loyalties becomes acute as she must decide how to testify. The painful facts leading up to the judge's decision are interwoven throughout the narrative, while Pril tries to understand how a friend she knew so intimately could behave as she did. The denouement of this auspicious debut is strong and affecting. (Oct.)