Among Friends

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What to expect

A perfect world. But a betrayal that could shatter everything.

'Every sentence keeps you hanging in the air, waiting for the next punch to the gut' - Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

'A hard diamond of a novel . . . I have not stopped thinking of it since' - Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters

For thirty years, Amos and Emerson have built a life others envy. Their wives are close, their teenage daughters have grown up together, their days are passed in the comfortable languor of New York City wealth. Their bond seems unbreakable.

This weekend, however, something is different. After gathering for Emerson’s birthday at his country home, celebration gives way to old rivalries and resentments. When tensions erupt, their finely made world is ruptured in one shocking act of violence.

In its wake, each must ask: when your world collapses, what — and who — will you sacrifice to survive?

Hal Ebbott’s Among Friends is a razor-sharp look at the dark side of American wealth, the brittle foundations of friendship, and the desperate lengths we go to to keep our secrets hidden.

‘Bracingly honest and affectingly intimate’ – The Guardian
'Assured, acutely perceptive and beautifully written’ – Financial Times
'Packs a huge emotional punch. I couldn’t put it down' – Daily Mail
‘I’m already begging my friends to read it so we can discuss the ending’ – ELLE
'Like a cold gin and tonic on a hot day' – The Washington Post

Critics Review

A wonderful, sly and subtle novel. Every sentence keeps you hanging in the air, waiting for the next punch to the gut. Wow.
Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
In the way that a forceful intelligence or an infectious voice or a fresh vision can alter how we observe and answer the world, Among Friends brought me into its cool environs and made me engage my days differently. It's no small accomplishment for a first novel, or for any novel.
Richard Ford
Among Friends is a powerful, elegant novel that offers unsparing and lyrically rendered insight into the lives of others
Claire Lombardo, the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Among Friends is smart and nuanced about the damage people are prepared to endure in the name of loyalty and comfort. The deep desire to only hear the story we want, or need, to be true. I was completely drawn in
Claire Lynch,  author of A Family Matter
Among Friends is a masterly debut. Hal Ebbott ranges from the most exquisite, Jamesian discriminations to the graspable, all-American solidities of Updike and Richard Yates. This is a writer to watch, with excitement and the highest expectations
John Banville, author of The Sea
The violation that befalls these two families has the unalterable destiny a Greek dramatist like Sophocles might have imagined. Hal Ebbott has written an exquisitely crafted family tragedy.
John Irving
Impressively nuanced . . . Among Friends is a bracingly honest and affectingly intimate depiction of abuse, family dynamics and self-deceit. It is sharply observed and psychologically astute, somehow both passionate and dispassionate, and it upends its characters’ lives so ruthlessly and revealingly that it is hard not to take pleasure in a false facade being finally smashed.
The Guardian
Two dear male friends - after many years of friendship one of them does something unforgivable. Or is it? What makes this novel work is how much Ebbot leaves out. He never comes into a scene a word too soon or stays a sentence too late
Noami Alderman, Books of the Year, The Spectator
It’s beautifully written and packs a huge emotional punch. I couldn’t put it down and kept thinking about it long after I finished. Brilliant
Daily Mail
Ebbott's voice and language set the book apart from other family dramas
NPR
Ebbott is obviously a writer of lavish talents in all the old-school virtues of sentence-writing, paragraph-building, dialogue, characterisation, plot and pacing . . . as the properly page-turning repercussions continue, it’s not just the action that darkens, but the whole social setting
Daily Telegraph
This accomplished debut revolves around two wealthy families . . . simmering tensions and festering rivalries test relationships, but eventually a brutal betrayal threatens to upend lives
The Economist, Best books of the year so far 2025
Among Friends is utterly engrossing; I’m already begging my friends to read it so we can discuss the ending.
ELLE, Best books of Summer 2025
Stylish and assured . . . Ebbott’s prose is honed and aphoristic, recalling the work of James Salter and John Cheever . . . The sentences go down easy, like a cold gin and tonic on a hot day.
The Washington Post
Hal Ebbott’s roman d’analyse-style debut resurfaces old rivalries and resentments, be it class, marriage or power . . . Ebbott grants the readers an intimate insight into thoughts vs actions that will leave you questioning your oldest friendships
The New Statesman
A hard diamond of a novel, Among Friends is cut through with brilliant prose and unsparing insights into the parts of ourselves that usually go unsaid. Ebbott's sentences are sharp enough to wound, yet alive with tenderness. It’s rare to read a debut this exacting and vital; I have not stopped thinking of it since
Coco Mellors, author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters
In refined prose that feels like a throwback to mid-20th-century psychological realism, Ebbott lays bare the many ways in which the families harm each other as each character seeks to protect the status quo . . . It's an alluring accomplishment
Publishers Weekly

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