Review of Among Friends by Hal Ebbot

Amos and Emerson have been friends since they were young. Now older, each with wives and teenage daughters, they must navigate their relationship amid new and challenging circumstances. The novel opens with a dinner party where the couples and their daughters get together. What should be a joyful occassion is somewhat soured by the fact Amos has hit a woman with his car on the way over. The woman had mistaken their car for her lover’s, who’s she had planned to throw herself infront of, suicide note in hand. This turn of events gives the evening a quiet edge of bizarre. From here, we are invited to read between the lines of each character’s relationship with each other and with themselves and when one of the daughters accuses someone of something sinister, everyone’s world is thrown upsidedown and old friendships, old perceptions are called into question in ways they never expected.

With searing and often humorous dialogue, Ebbott’s debut read, at times, like a Noel Coward play. Each character was so vivid to me, drawing me in slowly before dropping the bomb that explodes them all apart. This is really clever literary fiction that looks at toxic masculinity alongside teenage girlhood in a viscerally realistic and quietly haunting way.

Reviewed by Abi

Published on 26/06/25 by Pan Macmillan

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