We Can Still Be Friends

by Kelly Cherry

"Kelly Cherry brings an unerring ear and a poet’s sensibility to her difficult unraveling the tangle of emotions in our all-too-human hearts."—Lee Smith

" We Can Still Be Friends is Kelly Cherry at her best, which is to say it is a brilliant novel both furious and funny."—Robert Olen Butler

"Cherry’s novel is lyrical, offbeat and sexy."— Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ava has invested everything in her long-running affair with Tony, a handsome doctor from Chicago, though lately, things have not been quite right. Then Tony telephones Ava to tell her that yes, there is someone else, and that his new love, Claire, is the beautiful art-historian wife of a movie producer whom he had been seeing for two months. But, he assures Ava, of course, he cares for her, and they can still be friends.

Ava is furious. This was the relationship that was supposed to lead to marriage, or at least a child. She decides that she is owed a baby, and that she is going to collect, if not from Tony then from Claire’s husband, Boyd. By permitting Claire’s affair, he is to blame for Ava’s loss. And Ava flies out to Los Angeles to tell him so.

But what happens changes everything, for Ava, Tony, Claire and Boyd. This is a witty and whimsical take on the age old adage, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Kelly Cherry is the author of six works of fiction, as well as a memoir, essays, stories, nine volumes of poetry and two translations. She is Eudora Welty professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her writing. She now lives in Virginia with her husband.

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Howard]

An unremarkable start--another thirtyish woman contemplating her unfulfilled singleness--builds into a rich, wise, and gently humorous group portrait of adults looking to connect to someone or something beyond themselves.

Ava, a professor of Women's Studies in Chicago, on sabbatical in Memphis, is informed by Tony, the stern, controlled, heart surgeon whose child she recently miscarried, that he is in love with Claire, a professor of Art History in LA, married to generous, devoted, Boyd, a successful and long-sober movie producer. Ava, smart, vulnerable but strong in her own way, and not completely stable--Tony, we later find out, met her in the locked ward of his hospital--feels cheated of both a man and the child she was meant to have, and seeks a crazy, logical, justice: while vain, imperious, Claire is in Chicago conducting her affair with Tony, Ava flies to LA, seeks out Boyd, and requests impregnation. Boyd, much better than Ava at suppressing an equally complex inner life, fears losing Claire, who has broken their long-standing unspoken agreement by letting her affair with Tony grow serious. Looking for a way to transcend himself, swayed by the momentousness of creating a life, something Claire can't do, Boyd capitulates. There's a lot going on here: Cherry has smart things to say about academia, race, men, women and identity, and, given her compelling, entertaining prose--she's controlled enough that she's free to loosen up and play--this could have been a diverting, middle-brow soap, just serious enough that readers could pat themselves on the back for enjoying it, but, told in passages that inhabit each of the four main characters' perspectives in turn, sometimes retelling the same scene from each, it becomes a moving exploration of isolation and connection propelled by plot to a surprising, inevitable conclusion, an emotionally resonant epiphany that answers to both character and circumstance.

A surprising and rewarding mix of technique, ideas, and genuine emotional insight.

[Kelly]

Just awful. Through all the plodding and plotting, I can see the glimmer of a wonderful mind. Maybe I should read her poetry, because, it seems, Cherry is no fiction writer. But the novel’s too, too careful effort at making sure the reader gets everything that's happening makes me crazy.

There is such a lack of immediate, scenic detail and action, I found myself grunting in frustration and often barely able to keep going. The only thing that pushed me along was my curiosity at how the author would resolve the plot, rather than how the characters would sack up and take care of their own lives.