As a Friend by Forrest Gander (review)

147 Book Notes As a Friend, by Forrest Gander New Directions, 2008 reviewed by Kristina Marie Darling In his first novel, recently released by New Directions, awardwinning poet Forrest Gander explores the intersection of attraction , betrayal, and friendship, a thematic approach that proves striking. Set in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the book chronicles a series of emotionally fraught exchanges between Clay, the novel’s protagonist, and an enigmatic land surveyor named Les, whose deceptive life holds a strange fascination for residents of the small town. Gracefully integrating several characters’ stories , As a Friend uses the everyday as a point of entry into larger questions about the limitations and possibilities of relationships, remaining stylistically innovative all the while. Gander’s use of these themes to structure the text is particularly impressive. Divided into four sections, each narrated by a different character, the book alternates between the protagonist ’s perspective and the voices of several women involved in Les’s life. In doing so, the author frequently draws parallels between friendship and romance, suggesting that the boundaries between the two often blur. The passage in which Gander describes Clay’s perception of Les’s wife, Sarah, exemplifies this trend in the novel. He writes, for example, in the second section of the book, Maybe I fell in love with Les through Sarah, but what it looked like to some people was that I had fallen in love with her. Maybe I had fallen in love with Sarah too, somehow, but I couldn’t really tell where Les stopped and she began. They were so entangled, you couldn’t razor them apart. In other words, the author suggests that through friendship with Sarah, in which he learns a great deal about the young woman’s love for her husband, the protagonist finds himself attracted to Les in much the same way as she describes. For Clay, the two almost merge into the same character, an idea that Gander conveys gracefully through his characterization of Sarah, who, like many other men and women in the novel, appears as a foil to her inscrutable husband. Although presenting friendship as CRSUM09 nonfiction.indd 147 5/22/2009 12:43:41 PM colorado review 148 complementary to more romantic relationships, the author frequently suggests that the two types of interaction prove necessary to each other, particularly as they afford Clay a greater understanding of both Les and, in turn, himself. While presenting interaction with others as a means toward self-discovery, As a Friend also explores the effects of abandonment and betrayal on one’s identity, the end result being a multifaceted treatment of relationships in modern life. The author establishes these themes as central to the book in the first section, which begins by depicting a woman in childbirth, fighting for life as the father (presumably Les) travels the Midwest “with five weeks’ pay and anaconda boots.” In doing so, Gander suggests that just as the new child is brought into a life already riddled with loss and bitterness, this presence of inevitable tragedy remains part of the human condition, into which every person is born. These themes are particularly apparent in the descriptions of the child’s effect on the young girl’s family, which the author describes thus: In the last few months, eating, sulking, expanding, the girl had spoken less and less as though her energies, the remnants of her youth, were being sucked inward and consumed. As if the infant were drawing off whatever was left of a cordial relationship between the widow and her daughter. And sometimes, it seemed to the widow that her daughter had pent up her feelings as a punishment , as though she, her mother, were to blame. In this excerpt, the author suggests that Les’s child is brought into a world that he has unknowingly changed, worsening the tensions between the young girl and her mother. By prefacing As a Friend with a passage like this one, Gander implies that this kind of suffering often remains inextricable from the romance and self-discovery that other characters experience as a result of their relationships with Les. Ultimately portraying abandonment and introspection as closely connected, As a Friend offers...