Best Friends: A Novel [Hardcover]

Martha Moody (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2001

An unlikely friendship between women that spans two decades drives this unforgettable first novel.

Oberlin College, 1973. Clare Mann, the daughter of a Protestant working-class family from Ohio, has never met anyone like her new roommate, Sally Rose. Wealthy, pretty, and Jewish, barely emancipated from her close-knit Los Angeles family, Sally has led a sheltered life. Still, she and the hard-working, jaded Clare form an extraordinary friendship that endures for years, through disastrous marriages, motherhood, and demanding careers on opposite coasts. Clare is fascinated by Sally's calm probity, her family's seeming perfection, the utter confidence and willful naivete that rule her personal life, while sheer ruthlessness governs her law practice. She comes to need Sally the way she has never needed anyone, and her trips to California provide respite from her own family difficulties and her growing responsibilities as a doctor specializing in AIDS.

But as Clare grows closer to the Roses over the years, especially to Sally's father, she stumbles upon a carefully guarded family secret that could alienate her from Sally forever. And when the death of Ben, Sally's heroin-addicted younger brother, follows soon after the death of their mother, Clare is stunned to see this once-enviable and larger-than-life family reduced to human proportions.

In this impressive debut, Martha Moody is pitch-perfect in her depiction of the subtle shifts of emotion and perspective that occur as people-and friendships-mature. Readers of Iris Rainer Dart's Beaches and Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle will delight in Best Friends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First novels that track a pair of friends from college days through their subsequent lives aren't exactly uncommon, but Moody's is so freshly observed and gifted with such a palpable sense of the ravages of time that it feels utterly new. Clare, the narrator, is a prematurely cynical Ohio girl, daughter of a left-wing schoolteacher, who says up-front that all she wanted out of college when she went to Oberlin in 1973 was "unrest and demonstrations." Sally Rose is her roommate, an apparently nave, sheltered kid from a wealthy Los Angeles family whose occasional sly wit and perfect word choices appeal to Clare. The girls grow close, and soon Clare is making regular visits to the big house off Mulholland Drive where Sid, Sally's indulgent, wise-guy father, seems to cast a spell over a happy household. Sally never questions the source of the family wealth, but inquisitive Clare does and that is the first of many shocks that unfold as the shadows begin to gather around the Roses. Sally's bright, perky younger brother, Ben, turns into a haunted druggie; their mother, ace cook Esther, becomes increasingly remote; Sid begins a long decline into Alzheimer's. Yet despite their geographical distance, the two girls, Sally going into law of a peculiarly California kind, Clare becoming a hardheaded doctor with a specialty in AIDS, never lose their deep attachment, which somehow sustains them through a darkening landscape. They both suffer their share of unhappy relationships and here Moody's skills at character drawing, already clear in her portraits of Sid and Ben, take full rein and both come to rueful realization of their limitations, and those of life itself. Even in its dying fall, however, the book never loses its edge, at once compassionate and humorous, nor its moving conviction that a strong friendship between women can be one of life's most powerful relationships.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Moody's first novel examines the dynamics of friendship between two very different women, Clare Ann Mann, a small-town Ohio girl, and Sally Rose, who hails from Los Angeles. Meeting as college roommates, the girls are surprised to learn that, paradoxically, Clare Ann is the worldlier of the two. Despite their many differences, the two form a bond that will last a lifetime or at least until the end of the book. Pared to one-third its length, this might have been a valid study of friendship. However, the drama disaster, disappointment, revealed lies, childbirth, drug abuse, AIDS, and so on continues ad infinitum and strains credibility. Expecting some form of closure at the end, the reader is left wondering where the next page is. It is as if Moody simply did not know how to escape the web. Having been a finalist for a Best American Short Stories anthology, Moody might find more success in that more succinct genre. Patricia Gulian, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (May 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573221880
• ISBN-13: 978-1573221887
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,451,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Best Friends, October 7, 2007

By 

Anna M. Ligtenberg "AnnaLovesBooks" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Best Friends (Mass Market Paperback)

ISBN 1573229350 - I really, really wanted to like this book. A "valentine to the staying power of women's friendships" sounds like a book that, as a woman, I ought to like. I am still dismayed to realize I basically finished it only because I started it - proving that it is, at least, a valentine to the staying power of my stubborn streak.

Clare and Sally met as roommates in college in 1973 and their friendship spans the rest of their lives, through husbands and kids and divorces and tragedies. Clare is from Ohio, Sally from California. It is Clare, as the voice telling the story, whose point of view the reader sees everything from. She is dazzled by the wealth of Sally's family and by California in general, but that wears off as she finds out the secrets of the Rose family. Each time Clare comes into possession of one of the family secrets, she is tempted to run to Sally with the information, knowing it will ruin Sally's relationships with her family members but not particularly caring - if it helps her keep Sally to herself, it seems to be fine with Clare.

First, there's not a single character in the entire book over the age of 10 that I didn't absolutely despise. That's a problem that the book never gets past, because the storyline isn't good enough. It suffers from an almost ridiculous level of drama - the "crimes" (both legal and moral) of both girls' fathers, the way the various characters die, Clare's not-quite-gay attempts to push everyone else out of Sally's life, it's all just too much to be interesting and becomes laughable. Clare's weird love of her roommate comes out in strange sentences - "...trying to make up for my obvious disappointment at seeing her pregnant again. I couldn't believe it. It was almost more than I could stand, that she and Peter had thrust themselves together again." Who thinks of their friends' pregnancy in those terms? Who even thinks of their friends in those terms at all??

If high drama were the only problem with the storyline, it might not have been as bad... but it's not the only problem. The storyline seems to be summed up with "they met in college and stayed friends all their lives". Big deal, that's not a novel, it's a sentence! Even Clare's dedication to her AIDS patients doesn't do much to make up for the fact that she comes off as a terrible, selfish person surrounded by lots of other terrible, selfish people. The best that can be said of the book is that Moody made excellent use of events (the beginning of AIDS awareness, the OJ trial, the Godfather movies) to set the time frame clearly for the reader. I'd read something else from her if I came across it, but pass this one by, it's not worth the effort.

- AnnaLovesBooks

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Friends, June 5, 2001

By 

Kelly Dunigan (Dayton, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Friends: A Novel (Hardcover)

Wow,and this is her first novel! Intelligent, insightful- Clare Mann would be proud of Moody's use of adjectives. This author has a gift for intricate detail that brings her characters to life. I normally read medical/legal thrillers...but this book captivated me for the entire weekend. Loved it!

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars She bit off too big a bite, July 11, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Friends (Mass Market Paperback)

This first novel tries to do too much and one gets the feeling the author is riding a runaway pony. AIDS, childbirth, men, lies, [physical activity], drugs, and rock and roll - Where are world wars and espionage? That's all that's lacking in this too-long attempt to explore the dynamics of friendship between two women (one from the Midwest, one from LA) who met as college roommates. Good idea, but Moody tried to pack too much into one book.