Among Friends

Ebbott focuses his gaze on two wealthy couples in his elegant debut. Unscrupulous lawyer Emerson, who’s married to dissatisfied Retsy, has been friends with psychiatrist Amos since high school, and with Amos’s physician wife Claire since childhood. Their 16-year-old daughters, Anna and Sophie, have been thrown together for years but are growing apart. One October, Emerson invites Amos and his family for a weekend at his country house outside New York City. The weekend’s peace is disturbed first by minor incidents—a twisted ankle, a broken bottle, a joke taken as an insult—and later by a horrifying betrayal. Months later, one character, whose life has been shattered by the events of the weekend, reveals a secret to the others, who must then decide how to handle the revelation. 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 of their “smooth, edgeless life.” The novel’s hothouse atmosphere can feel a bit static—the characters appear to exist outside of time and of any society but their own, as if released from the amber of a John Cheever story—but it’s also the novel’s greatest strength, as Ebbott conjures up a world where mental machinations trump morality. It’s an alluring accomplishment. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (June)