My Best Friend [Hardcover]

Laura Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2002

In her spellbinding hardcover debut, Laura Wilson, the internationally acclaimed author of A Little Death and Dying Voices, delivers her most daring novel of psychological suspense yet: a mesmerizing tale of the ties that bind and of the obsession that sought to sever them.

My Best Friend

England, 1944: She was the most beloved children’s author of her generation. In a time of unparalleled fear, youngsters everywhere sought sanctuary in M.M. Haldane’s magical world, where no danger was ever great enough to prevent her hero from returning safely home to tea.

But when her own son, Gerald, went down to the woods one day, not even a mother could save him from making a discovery so horrifying that it would mark the end of both his sister’s life and his innocence forever. When the doors to the nursery close, they close for eternity....

England, 1995: As the country prepared to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of V-E Day, Gerald remains terrorized by his memories. Desperately lonely, he finds solace in following a young girl home from school. To protect her, he says. But when the girl disappears, all eyes turn accusingly to him.

Running for his life, Gerald’s only salvation is to finally confront the atrocious events of his terrible past — and the unthinkable, unspeakable truth about his star-crossed family, steeped in fiction and in guilt, that can finally set him free.

With the precision of a sculptress, Laura Wilson chisels into the minds of her characters, carving their stories with the skill of a master craftsman. Spanning a chasm of decades, ruthlessly peeling away the layers of an astonishing mystery, My Best Friend takes us on a journey of literary suspense that is at once disturbing, hypnotic, and impossible to forget.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, December 2001: With only three books, Laura Wilson has established herself as one of the very few heirs apparent to the psychological novels of Patricia Highsmith and Minette Walters. Wilson uses the device of telling her story through several different voices. Each voice is in possession of a portion of the story, the telling of which is always colored by the personality and self-interest of the narrator. It is the reader who is the unbiased observer, listening to each person's story as it unravels into a coherent and horrifying chronicle of lies, deceit, and murder.

We meet Gerald both as a boy, through his journals, and as a troubled man in his early 60s. He has obviously had some run-ins with the police in his time, but we are not sure about what. Gerald is the son of one of England's greatest children's writers, M.M. Haldane, now deceased. M. (Marjorie) M. (Maud) was the creator of Tom Tyler, boy detective, and she and her husband, Arthur Traxton, adopted another child before Gerald was born. That child, Vera Traxton, was murdered during the war and an American serviceman was hanged for the crime.

We also meet Tilly, M.M.'s sister and a former actress who now lives out her life in a nursing home with her dog. She loves to reminisce about her time on the stage, but she also has a lot to say about her sister's treatment of her own children.

Jo works with Gerald. She is a single mother and her young daughter, Mel, is being followed home by an older man. Jo is worried about this, but she has a new boyfriend, Ron, and is just not concentrating.

As each person talks, the reader is treated to a story that builds to a shocking climax. There are also excerpts from M.M. Haldane's books, which only add to the horror of what we think may be happening.

My Best Friend is an original, chilling tour de force that solidifies the growing reputation of an exciting new author. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

Delicate, merciless psychological probing drives this U.S. hardcover debut by suspense novelist Wilson (A Little Death, etc.), a study of the precarious line that separates the oddball from the murderous villain. As a boy in the Suffolk countryside in 1944 and as a grown man-child in contemporary London, Gerald Haxton is a gentle, troubled soul. He begins his narrative wistfully ("It wasn't the first time I'd come across a hand"). He then recounts how his twin brother died at birth, his sister was brutally murdered while still a teenager, his father cannot protect him and his mother cannot abide him. Mumsy is the famous M.M. Haldane, author of the Tom Tyler, Boy Detective series, and excerpts from the detective stories provide an excruciating contrast to Gerald's own bleak childhood. As an adult, he lives vicariously through theatrical experiences, seeing Cats 105 times. Despite run-ins with the police, he begins following a young London girl who reminds him of his sister, Vera. Interspersed with Gerald's story is that of his Aunt Tilly, his mother's sister and his father's lover, anxious to set things right before she dies. Each of Wilson's characters represents a unique imbalance between human weakness and longing for something better. The emotional weight that tips the balance to create kindness or crime, a savior or a monster, grounds Wilson's story as well as her style. She is at her best in detailing loneliness. If she rushes a bit to tie up loose ends or uses secondary characters who lean to stereotype, it does not undermine the stark effect of her psychological portrait of a family of oddballs and monsters more horrible and more real than anything portrayed in the Haldane books, which dramatize childhood travails.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (January 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385335792
• ISBN-13: 978-0385335799
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,933,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful characters and engrossing plot, July 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: My Best Friend (Mass Market Paperback)

It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did, I was mesmerized. This book is SO much better than other fiction that is more popular--I don't understand why. The writing reminded me very much of Ruth Rendell in terms of the in-depth characterization and "different" people portrayed. I grew to really love some of the characters and was so touched in some places that I cried. Four and a half stars, really, and the final two-thirds is almost five.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well deservrd hardcover debut for this talented writer, January 2, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Best Friend (Hardcover)

Gerald was one of those people who seem to always have a black cloud following him around. His mother, Marjorie Haldane a famous but high-strung writer of children's books, ignored her son almost from the day he was born because he wasn't the perfect baby she wanted. When he was about twelve he found the dead body of his pregnant sixteen year old sister Vera in the woods near his home. The police questioned Gerald before deciding the perpetrator was her boyfriend. Later on the police questioned Gerald again because he was always showing up to see the schoolgirls play soccer. They never had enough evidence to formally charge him but he was always fearful of law enforcement from that experience.

Now in his middle age Gerald lives a quiet life and the only real social contact he has is with his landlady. His co-worker Jo thinks he's an odd duck. When her boyfriend Ron tells her that twice before the police questioned Gerald in regards to young girls, she becomes concerned because her daughter Melanie tells her that a man answering to Gerald's description has been following her around. When Melanie disappears, Ron, Jo and the police immediately focus their attention on Gerald who's also vanished. This leads to the police alerting an angry public to be on the lookout for him, not realizing that someone working behind the scenes is stirring the angry the crowd into a riotous mob.

This is a superb work of psychological suspense told from the view points of three people, Gerald, Jo and Gerald's Aunt Lillie. British author Laura Wilson imbues her novel with a Gothic feeling of foreboding so that the audience senses that something terrible is going to happen at any moment. MY BEST FRIEND is a book well worth reading.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars great writing talent but limited by genre, September 12, 2002

By 

LifeboatB (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Best Friend (Hardcover)

I read this book last night in one long sitting, so obviously I thought it was a gripping story. Laura Wilson is far superior to many writers who attempt to tell a story in several different voices--her chapters actually sound like they were written by different people. This book has the added bonus of a wealth of convincing period detail about WWII in England. I thought all the characters were interesting, and I appreciated the way Wilson incorporated their different attitudes towards their jobs and families into the story. However, I think Wilson's interpretation of the mystery genre hampered the success of the book. The ending feels rushed, as the author attempts to tie up a grim crime in a few pages, and the way a few of the characters are left at the end to cope with what's happened to them feels callous. I also had trouble believing that certain characters would really commit the shameful acts they confess to, maybe because Wilson was so successful at making them sympathetic. (Or maybe just because what they do doesn't totally make sense.) I can recommend this book to mystery lovers, but I also think Wilson should try her hand at some non-suspense fiction.