Best Friends edition by Thomas Berger Literature Fiction eBooks
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“The characters in Best Friends...are...recognizably human in their weaknesses and their destinies. It is Berger's genius as an observer and storyteller that we never, for a moment, take our eyes off them.”—Jeffrey Frank, The Washington Post Book World
A moving story about childhood friendships falling under the strain of adulthood quickly becomes so much more in this tale that is as absurd as it is true to life from the author of Little Big Man.
Roy Courtright and Sam Grendy have been best friends for as long as either of them care to remember. As far as they’re concerned, they’re brothers, but sans the mess of a sibling rivalry. That they’re complete opposites has never mattered. Until now.
After Sam suffers a heart attack, Roy and Sam’s wife Kristen both find themselves wishing they had said more—to Sam, and to each other. Just as Roy begins to grapple with these new feelings for Kristen, things go from bad to worse. The woman Roy’s been meaning to break up with has been murdered.
What starts off as the charming tale of an oddball friendship quickly becomes a feast of shocking twists, heartbreak, and vengeance that only Thomas Berger could weave.
Additional Praise for Best Friends
“Berger’s…style [is] at once elegant and casual, with his usual mix of sweetness and cynicism.”—Los Angeles Times
“[Berger’s] precise and exquisite dialogue [are] entertaining, even when the plot is ridiculous. And his deeply ironic view of the world we live in is refreshing, especially these days when irony is in short supply.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Incorrigibly subversive.”—The Hollywood Reporter
“[Best Friends] is, in fact, a compact accomplished novel of ideas. That Berger’s take on adultery, loyalty, friendship and myriad other intangibles is both deeply satirical and deeply felt is perhaps the book’s real wonder.” —LA Weekly
“No other writer can build a symphony of seriocomic confusion with such a sure touch. Berger’s terrific plot takes several unforeseen and unsettling turns en route to its savage denouement. And it’s capped by an absolute killer of a final sentence. Nobody writes them like Thomas Berger. Not to be missed.”—Kirkus Reviews
Best Friends edition by Thomas Berger Literature Fiction eBooks
Exotic car dealer Roy Courtright, a bachelor with superficial tastes in women, has been best friends with Sam Grandy, a large-boned, passive-aggressive sort, for over twenty years. Sam has over the years asked Roy for loans of huge sums of money to compensate for his capricious consumer habits and Roy, the benificiary of a large inheritance, has happily obliged. But as the novel unfolds, we see that Roy begins to examine his friendship with more vigor. Sam Grandy is after all emotionally undeveloped (seems like a twelve-year-old) and seems more in love with his gadgets than he is with his wife, Kristin. Roy and Sam's wife Kristin bond when they both must nurse Sam, the sufferer of a heart-attack. Through this bonding, they see themselves, and the feelings they have for each other, with more clarity and also see, with equal clearness, the noxiousness of Sam. With these new revelations, they must test where their loyalties lay. The conflict is handled well as the novel, well paced, reaches a steady climax.I've read much Berger over the years and argue that this must be one of his best novels in part because it relies on less slapstick than previous efforts and instead relies on complex characters and highly ambiguous situations so that the reader is constantly amazed by the novel's twists and turns.
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Best Friends edition by Thomas Berger Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
A master of dissecting the human psyche, Berger posits a twenty-year friendship, begun in adolescence, and fillets it for his reader's edification. Probing beneath the surface of the niceties that go into the long-established patterns of a relationship, Best Friends is particularly interesting as it concerns two successful young men, Roy Courtwright, a bachelor, and Sam Grandy, married for three years.
Roy has studiously avoided any interference with the couple, respecting their marital integrity while protecting his own turf as best friend to Sam. Roy is a friend who knows his place, treats his lovers kadmirably and barely knows Sam's wife, Kristin on a personal level. Much like a long-term marriage, the friendship is predictable and never hurtful to either man. But when the overweight and over-indulgent Sam has a heart attack, everyone is caught off balance.
In the midst of unexpected personal trouble, Roy turns to Kristin as a substitute, unwilling to burden Sam or jeopardize his health. Roy suffers some trepidation about sharing his problems with Kristin, but is too distraught to keep his own counsel. During their conversation, Kristin inadvertently mentions some remarks Sam has made about his friend, words that sound like betrayal to Roy. In doing so, Kristin illuminates an unsuspected problem in the men's relationship. Reacting to the thinly veiled animosity in Sam's words, Roy questions the basis of their friendship, for loyalty and integrity are paramount to Roy's wellbeing, while Sam is ambivalent about such values. Roy is shocked to realize that he has harbored some resentment toward Sam, "Maybe he and I are friends just out of habit, though maybe the same can be said of everything else. Living may be just a habit."
The real beauty of Berger's intelligent and thought provoking novel is the simplicity of his protagonists, the commonality of experience, so remarkably familiar that the reader is privy to the thoughts and small disharmonies of these characters. As personal as a private conversation, Best Friends exposes the important relationships we take for granted. Luan Gaines/2003.
"Best Friends" by Thomas Berger is about two grown men, Roy and Sam, who have been friends since childhood. As adults, it seems like they fight to keep a connection despite no longer having anything in common. Roy is very handsome, a playboy, came into an inheritance, and owns a used luxury car dealership purely out of his sheer joy for high-end cars. Sam is overweight, married, not working, spend-happy, and always looking for a handout from Roy. Unfortunately, Berger never gives us much reason to care about the men's friendship and this is where the author somewhat fails. We're just supposed to assume that the two are still good friends because they were once good friends as children, but we're never really shown anything that would cement this friendship in our minds.
The first three-quarters of the novel are meant to be the "set-up." We're supposed to get to know the characters and understand how their personalities mesh together. Again, Berger failed to deliver. Sam and Kristin remained two-dimensional while Roy became slightly more two-dimensional. I was still waiting for three-dimensional portraits of all three characters.
The "shocker" and conflict of the novel comes when -- about three-fourths through -- Roy sleeps with Sam's wife, Kristin, and he feels love for the very first time. No longer are women just playthings to him; now his heart is involved and he doesn't know how to react. Finally, albeit too late in the game, we start to delve deeper into the characters' personalities, only to be disappointed again by Kristin and Sam. Their actions and reactions to this development don't mesh with their "established" two-dimensional personalities and don't elevate them to three-dimensional status just because we've learned something new about each.
I think the novel and storyline has potential, but the characters really need more fleshing out. As for Berger's writing, it's average, dwelling too much on unimportant details (the various car models that Roy sells) and skips the all-important dialogue which shows us more about each character and creates some tension.
Loved Thomas Berger's "Adventures of the Artificial Woman", so I thought, why not try this out? I wasn't that excited about it. It took me a while to get through because I wasn't so interested, and it's not even a long story.
Exotic car dealer Roy Courtright, a bachelor with superficial tastes in women, has been best friends with Sam Grandy, a large-boned, passive-aggressive sort, for over twenty years. Sam has over the years asked Roy for loans of huge sums of money to compensate for his capricious consumer habits and Roy, the benificiary of a large inheritance, has happily obliged. But as the novel unfolds, we see that Roy begins to examine his friendship with more vigor. Sam Grandy is after all emotionally undeveloped (seems like a twelve-year-old) and seems more in love with his gadgets than he is with his wife, Kristin. Roy and Sam's wife Kristin bond when they both must nurse Sam, the sufferer of a heart-attack. Through this bonding, they see themselves, and the feelings they have for each other, with more clarity and also see, with equal clearness, the noxiousness of Sam. With these new revelations, they must test where their loyalties lay. The conflict is handled well as the novel, well paced, reaches a steady climax.
I've read much Berger over the years and argue that this must be one of his best novels in part because it relies on less slapstick than previous efforts and instead relies on complex characters and highly ambiguous situations so that the reader is constantly amazed by the novel's twists and turns.
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