The Best of Friends

“The Village is the outdoor mall at the center of our close-knit suburban community, and they’re constantly throwing events in their outdoor space. Most of them end in fireworks.”

The Best of Friends opens with two loud reports, later identified as gunshots—an extreme anomaly for the gated neighborhood of its setting. This sentence grounds the story in an affluent, “close-knit” community whose neighbors all know each other, and where explosions usually have a festive meaning, making the novel’s central act of violence all the more shocking and earthshaking for its characters. Violence of this sort is not “supposed” to happen here and to families like their own.

“It has only been a day since the funeral. How could she? But it’s probably easier for her to worry about lawyers and things like that when her son, Caleb, is safely tucked in his bed at home tonight, unharmed.”

Lindsey, whose son Jacob was rendered brain-dead in the shooting, feels betrayed by her longtime friend Dani, who has speedily retained the services of a lawyer. The shooting occurred in Dani’s house, and the gun in question belonged to her and her husband. In her anger at Dani’s possible culpability (underscored by her seeking of legal advice), Lindsey ignores the fact that Dani’s son Caleb is far from “unharmed”: Actually, Caleb shows signs of deep psychological trauma and has not spoken a word since the incident. Lindsey also chooses to forget that Dani is fully dominated by her bullying husband, who insisted, against her wishes, on buying the gun and on bringing in the lawyer.