We Can Still Be Friends: A Novel [Hardcover]

Kelly Cherry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

"Kelly Cherry brings an unerring ear and a poet’s sensibility to her difficult task: unraveling the tangle of emotions in our all-too-human hearts."—Lee Smith

"We Can Still Be Friends is Kelly Cherry at her best, which is to say it is a brilliant novel both furious and funny."—Robert Olen Butler

"Cherry’s novel is lyrical, offbeat and sexy."—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ava has invested everything in her long-running affair with Tony, a handsome doctor from Chicago, though lately, things have not been quite right. Then Tony telephones Ava to tell her that yes, there is someone else, and that his new love, Claire, is the beautiful art-historian wife of a movie producer whom he had been seeing for two months. But, he assures Ava, of course, he cares for her, and they can still be friends.

Ava is furious. This was the relationship that was supposed to lead to marriage, or at least a child. She decides that she is owed a baby, and that she is going to collect, if not from Tony then from Claire’s husband, Boyd. By permitting Claire’s affair, he is to blame for Ava’s loss. And Ava flies out to Los Angeles to tell him so.

But what happens changes everything, for Ava, Tony, Claire and Boyd. This is a witty and whimsical take on the age old adage, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Kelly Cherry is the author of six works of fiction, as well as a memoir, essays, stories, nine volumes of poetry and two translations. She is Eudora Welty professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her writing. She now lives in Virginia with her husband.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Upon reading Cherry's piercing tale of adulterous entanglements, two cliches come to mind. The first is "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"; the second, "Be careful what you wish for." Although both may succinctly capture the story's essence, common cliches are not at all indicative of the complexity of this most uncommon novel. Try to follow: Ava, who has been spurned by her lover, Tony, when he falls in love with Claire on the same day that Ava miscarries his baby, exacts retribution by asking Claire's husband, Boyd, to impregnate her. Convoluted, no? Well, Boyd does as Ava wishes, and the ensuing pregnancy, despite Ava's assurances and Boyd's protestations to the contrary, involves them all on emotional levels none anticipate, although they should have. Driven by dubious motivation and displaying disturbing moral judgment, the foursome, in all its permutations, cannot possibly survive the chain of events they set into motion, or can they? Cherry's take on modern love is both discerning and disquieting; in all, a very cautionary tale. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Kelly Cherry is the author of six works of fiction, as well as a memoir, essays, stories, nine volumes of poetry and two translations. She is Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her writing. She now lives in Virginia with her husband.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; First edition. edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569473234
• ISBN-13: 978-1569473238
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,283,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty books of fiction (long and short), poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism. She has also published eight chapbooks and translations of two classical dramas. Her most recent titles are The Woman Who: Stories, The Retreats of Thought: Poems, and Girl in a Library: On Women Writers & The Writing Life. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. Her story collection The Society of Friends (which has nothing to do with the Society of Friends) received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Short Fiction for the best collection published in 1999. For her poetry she received the Hanes Prize for a body of work. Her new and selected poems, titled Hazard and Prospect, was a finalist for the Poets' Award. Cherry says, "I write because I have ideas that can be realized only by writing. Luckily, I love to write. And I love the thought that somewhere there may be someone who reads my work and responds to the heart of what I write."

Another book of poems is scheduled for 2013. She is completing a new book of stories and working on a book-length poem. After that there will be another book of stories (the third in her trilogy of short story collections set in Madison, Wisconsin), a memoir, and a novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intuiton, or Fate, November 30, 2003

By 

Manhattan Mom (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Can Still Be Friends: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel made me think. I can not say that about many novels that I read, because the majority of literature today is a series of active scenes connected by sexual encounters, or wishes of sexual encounters.

I enjoyed reading this novel of a variety of levels. I found it to be an interesting story, told in a very readable format. The chapters are all short, and they are told from the various viewpoints of the 4 major characters. I normally enjoy a story told like this because I enjoy seeing different aspects of the same situation (you know the saying- there's what he said, there's what she said, and then there's the truth). I do agree though that this novel does start to get repetetive, especially towards the end. It's almost as if the author got bored by the time she got to the last quarter of the book. But the sections in the beginning are very powerful, and give you a good incite into the characters and their behavior patterns.

My major literary problem with this novel is that the reader is given little knowledge of Ava's mother, and this information is doled out at practically the end of the novel. Given the nature of this book I felt that this relationship whould at least have been mentioned more than just in passing. I realize this was supposed to be some sort of literary device, but it didn't work for me. Ava's character was incomplete to me, and though I finished the book last night, I am still thinking about her motivations. Score one for th author because I continue to think about the book, but take one away because I am not thinking about the many wonderful things this book has to offer.

The language of th novel is simple and poetic and beautiful. Many of the passages were almost lyrical, and it was a pleasure to see language so simplistically, yet creatively used.

Though I have some problems, I do recommend reading this novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Literate Bridget, July 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: We Can Still Be Friends: A Novel (Hardcover)

The fad of sad-sack single gal books has almost run its course, because the majority are poorly written, redundant (ie anything by Jane Greene, et al) and witless; no we don't need another reference to Jimmy Choo shoes (wild) or tears in the pint of Hagen Daes. Kelly Cherry, unlike her competitors, is an actual poet and a literate writer who can reference allusions beyond the Brady Bunch. Though this can look, from the surface, like just another swingle's love lost book, it's a beautifully observed, poignant and poetic look at what it means to be human and feel deeply.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars women's fiction that understands men, October 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: We Can Still Be Friends: A Novel (Hardcover)

At a time when the publishing industry divides fiction into two rigid categories, "commercial" - meaning it's readable and entertainingly plotted but trashy -- and "literary" - meaning it's pretentious, overwritten, and academic and no one in their right minds would read it for pleasure - Kelly Chery is successfully writing fiction that straddles the two: it's smart, meaningful, lyrically written, and enjoyable. Isn't that what readers really want?

Other reviews here have summarized "We Can Still Be Friends" and praised its feminism. I'll avoid redundancy by not doing the former; and as a "guy," I'm not that concerned with the latter (except in the sense that the novel neatly taught me some things about the ways women think and feel). But what really struck me about this book, in contrast to a lot of "women's novels" and contrary to what a previous reviewer said, was the depth and sympathy with which the male characters were drawn. Cherry obviously worked conscientiously at that aspct of the book, and it paid off. Boyd, the movie producer, is quite nonstereotypical for his profession, and for me he was the most interesting and complex of the quartet. Tony, the multiracial heart surgeon who is tensely balanced between selfishness and generosity, came in a close second. Though it's true that the two women, Ava and Claire, are the driving forces of the action, the characterizations of Boyd and Tony may show the author's gifts even more impressively.