Best Friends

A Novel

By: Martha Moody

Narrated by: Renee Raudman

Before arriving at Oberlin in 1973, Clare Mann had never met anyone like Sally Rose. Rich and beautiful, Sally is utterly foreign to a middle-class, Midwestern Protestant like Clare - and utterly fascinating. The fascination only grows when Sally brings her home to L.A. Mr. Rose - charismatic, charming, and the owner of a profitable business shrouded in secrecy - is nearly as compelling a figure to Clare as he is to his own daughter. California seems like paradise after winters in Ohio. And Clare begins to look forward desperately to these visits, to carefree rides in Sally's Kharmann Ghia and lazy poolside days.

As the years pass, Clare becomes a doctor and Sally a lawyer, always remaining roommates at heart, only a plane ride or phone call away. Marriages and divorces and births and deaths do not separate them. But secrets might - for as Clare watches, the Rose family begins to self-destruct before her eyes. And the things she knows are the kinds of things that no one wants to tell a best friend.

©2001 Martha Moody (P)2007 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Freshly observed and gifted....The book never loses its edge...nor its moving conviction that a strong friendship between women can be one of life's most powerful relationships." (Publishers Weekly)
"A valentine to the staying power of women's friendships." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Hard to get thru

The narrator is atrocious! I’d already read the paper book 15 years ago and loved it! But this narrator/reader was horrible! Sounded like a teacher talking to her kindergartners. The male voices were just that “teacher” with a sore throat. Ugh. I recommend you read this yourself— don’t listen.

Complex and Satisfying

Odd pairing of two women and three or so decades of their evolution, devolution, intersection and divergence. Issues a bit dated (this is a nineties book) but that's just backstory. The basic narrative translates into any time and place and could all happen in present day with different situational challenges.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read, despite the naive-sounding narrator and her histrionics.