The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Best Friends, by Thomas Berger
reviewed by David W. Madden

Thomas Berger. Best Friends. Simon & Schuster, 2003. 209 pp. $24.00.

Best Friends is Thomas Berger’s twenty-second novel and evidence that his ironic, inventive muse remains as vibrant as ever. Without the fanfare that should accompany his brilliant accomplishments, Berger has created a fictional oeuvre as rich and varied as any in contemporary American letters. The novel centers on a pair of friends in midlife—Sam Grandy, a feckless though happily married man with no determinable career, and Roy Courtright, heir to a substantial inheritance, who deals in classic cars for upscale clients. The two have been boon companions since youth, know one another thoroughly, and are devoted to each other. When Grandy suffers a heart attack, Courtright is forced to examine a relationship he has long taken for granted. Suddenly involved in family intrigue, deception, financial impropriety, and sex, Courtright comes to despise his friend. Berger has often explored a psychological hinterland where characters suddenly find that the cherished, predictable certainties of their lives have morphed or disappeared altogether. These figures—whether a staid, middle-class businessman, the idle rich on their island retreat, citizens of a small burg, or a white man who shuttles between two ethnic worlds—suddenly discover that the Other is themselves. In Best Friends that Other is one’s most intimate companion, and the sense of personal and emotional dislocation is overwhelming. Berger has always been fascinated with the disjunction between appearance and essence, and Courtright finds himself contemplating such discrepancies, with no clear resolution to the dilemma. Berger writes in an immaculate prose that is extraordinarily precise and exacting and at the same time delightfully ironic. He excels at abrupt shifts between high and low language that perfectly register the wild emotional shifts of his characters. Every sentence is a foray into new, unexplored emotional territory. As is also the case in many of Berger’s novels, the conclusion is a subtle cliffhanger that sends the reader scurrying back through the text to disentangle the narrative’s tight coils. Best Friends is simply a gem.