As Good as Dead

February 23, 2015
Evans (The Blue Hour) explores the complexity of friendships as two women reconnect after 20 years. At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Esme and Charlotte become friends as Esme basks in Charlotte's adulation of her. Charlotte is a smalltown girl from a staid middle-class family while Esme's wealth and upper crust upbringing fascinate Charlotte. But jealousy simmers beneath the surface of their friendship, and Charlotte's betrayal of Esme has lasting consequences. Twenty years later, Charlotte is happily married to Will, and they are both successful professors at a university in Tucson. When Esme makes an effort to reconnect with Charlotte, Charlotte is willing to see whether she can rekindle their friendship. As Charlotte and Will meet with Esme and her husband, Jeremy, the encounter quickly becomes awkward, culminating in Esme's threatening behavior. Through flashbacks, Evans contrasts Charlotte's naïveté as a young women with her confident persona as a professor. But the undercurrent of Charlotte's insecurity remains part of her personality as she is forced to face the demons of her past. Evans's expertly plotted novel is a thoroughly satisfying study of the intricacies of relationships.

January 1, 2015
In Evans' latest (Suicide's Girlfriend, 2002, etc.), a friendship that has been dead for twenty years is suddenly exhumed.When Charlotte Price started at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1988, she was thrilled to fall easily into a friendship with the gorgeous and vibrant Esme Cole. "Female friendships always had been so hard for me, fraught with relentless deconstructions of who liked who better, but this person seemed utterly available!" narrates the older Charlotte. The two women became roommates for a semester while Charlotte's boyfriend, Will, was away in Italy. Yet their relationship didn't continue. After Esme became pregnant and left the workshop with her boyfriend and fellow writing student, Jeremy Fletcher, a disagreeable Southerner with a Confederate flag tattoo, Charlotte finished her degree, married Will, moved into a tenure-track job in Tucson and wrote four novels. Although she finds out later that Esme also moved to Tucson with Jeremy, the two women's paths do not cross until Esme unexpectedly drops in on Charlotte one morning 20 years after they last saw each other. The years have not been kind to Esme: "A stout, red-faced woman stood on our front steps. Boxy, olive pantsuit. Cropped hair the color of Vaseline." Esme's visit causes a crisis for Charlotte as she looks back on the end of their relationship, scarred by a secret betrayal that still haunts her. When Esme's intentions turn out to be less than friendly, Charlotte has to reckon with the consequences of her past behavior and hope for forgiveness. What Esme ultimately wants from Charlotte is intriguing and dangerous, but it comes too late in the story for it to infuse it with much-needed tension, and the most dynamic characters, Esme and Jeremy, are pushed into the background through Charlotte's neurotic, self-indulgent narration. Because the stakes are never high enough, there is no sense of mourning for this dead relationship. A novel about friendship, betrayal and the Iowa Writers' Workshop could have been satisfying in any number of ways, but with a floundering plot and tiresome narration, there are too many missed opportunities here.

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February 15, 2015

Charlotte Price has everything going for her. She's married to amazing professor Will Ludlow, living her dream of being a published author, and teaching writing at a local university. Then her former best friend, Esme Cole, shows up on her doorstep 20 years after their estrangement. Esme carries secrets from their past; secrets that have haunted Charlotte since the two stopped speaking. Long ago, Charlotte betrayed Esme and her current husband, Jeremy Fletcher. Will is not aware of these acts. In an attempt to rekindle their friendship, Esme invites Charlotte and Will over for dinner. However, her ulterior motive quickly becomes clear when she offers Charlotte an ultimatum, causing her past and present to collide in a decision that could prove to be both professionally unethical and result in her marriage being destroyed. Evans tells the story in alternating chapters that move backward and forward in time, slowly bringing the reader up to the present and the final decisions the women make. VERDICT This intelligent and literary psychological novel from Evans (The Blue House; Suicide's Girlfriend) creatively explores what happens when secrets, betrayal, and trust issues arise in a friendship and in a marriage.--Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015
Charlotte, a creative-writing professor at the University of Arizona, is happily married to Will, an art-history professor. To Charlotte's great sorrow, the couple were unable to have children, but they now have a rich, rewarding life together, busy with work and their own writing. Then Esm' Cole shows up on Charlotte's doorstep. Once roommates and best friends when they attended the storied University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, they have fallen out of touch. And the reason for their estrangement and Esm''s current visit soon becomes clear as Evans meticulously tracks the course of their rocky relationship. Evans seamlessly switches between the past, when an insecure Charlotte, desperate for a friend as bright and funny as Esm', puts up with Esm''s alternately hot and cold behavior, and the present, when Esm', now an overweight real-estate agent married to a failed writer, tries to blackmail Charlotte over secrets she once confided. Evans expertly captures the psychology of females who were both friends and rivals on every level, from writing to men. A suspenseful atmosphere and insightful writing are at the heart of this well-crafted novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)