marketers won 0-1 

Hal Ebbott: Among friends. 

This was a difficult read.

First of all - bought the book with high hopes. The marketers have made good job !!! ( and no, if John Irving really would have said "An exquisitely crafted family tragedy" about this book as it says in the book cover, there will be a significant pause between me and John Irving writing. No, the book was not that good, but what to do? I had bought the book, it was staring at me. Read, it invited, and I did).

Well about the book, there are two me, Amos and Emerson, their wifes, their two daughters. They are well off, they are solid in their friendship but then, something bad happens (and even before that, there is something which does not apply, something that does not add upp, is a bit off - authenticity, integrity). But the time the "bad"happens and reveals the characters true selves, the writing is oh so common and a bit boring and the chartacters, they lack interest and "after" they become monsters, they are so intolerable (to me) fading the bad, fading the responsibitites, the feelings of a decent human being not only interested how things are, how they should be, how they should continue, the keep up their current status quo.

The last part of the book was better (than the first half)but of those people, oh how badly Amos has failed his leap in the climbing in social ladder, his wife, oh so pretencious and Emerson, shape up, be a man, and his wife, a door mat? And the two daughters. Poor Anna. That is all I say. (And the ending of the book, oh so plain, so bland, boring).

I have been reading too many good books lately and this just did not add up to the expectations I had (my bad?)