As a Friend

by Forrest Gander

"Heroism is a secondary virtue," Albert Camus noted, "but friendship is primary." In his gem-like first novel, Forrest Gander writes of friendship, envy, and eros as a harmonic of charged overtones. Set in a rural southern landscape as vivid as its indelible characters, As a Friend tells the story of Les, a gifted man and land surveyor, whose impact on those around him (his friend Clay, his girlfriend Sarah) provokes intense self-examination and an...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811217450
• ISBN13: 9780811217453
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant and sensitive writing

As a French reader, it has been an amazing escape to discover Gander's way to describe, tell, make us feeling tansported by this story. I don't know very well the American litterature, but this novel is simpy fabulous. Special mention for the characters' complexity.

Beautifully written, beautifully told.

Not much more to say. A splendid surprise of a modern piece of literature.

Heartbreaking brevity

A prose poem more than a novel, this is the story of a man so gifted, magnetic and maddening that those who love him want to either become him or destroy him. It is heartbreaking writing. As a character and as a man, Les is terrifying in both his charisma and his dishonesty. One detail remains stuck in my mind; how when he couldn't find a glass, he bore a drink of cold water to his girlfriend in his own mouth. Something about that gesture conveys the perfection of Les, and the doom, because no one who had been loved by him would ever get over it.

Charisma, jealousy, friendship and powerful writing

It's a detective story, a love story, and an elegy, and it begins with the most amazing birth scene I've ever read. This is a slim novel, but it packs a wallop. Gorgeous writing, especially in the scenes of the land surveyors working in the woods. After what you think is the ending, there's a last (surprising) chapter that shifts the emotional register into a stirring affirmation--it's like leaving a tragic opera and hearing a late aria from the lobby and the music is somehow so high and clear and emotional, it changes the way you see everything. You step out into a transformed world. It made me think about friendship as one of life's most profound and most complex gifts.