Among Friends

With Neighbours L.R. Wright won a province of Alberta award for a first novel, and this, her third novel, shows her to be a competent novelist whose work is worth watching for.

Among Friends describes the intertwining lives of three women who live alone. The youngest of the trio is 33 and smarting from a recently ended love affair. Marion, a little older, has resolutely insulated herself from intimacy, while the third woman is a widow whose only son has left home and is about to marry. All three are journalists and, when she writes of the milieu in which these women move, L.R. Wright, herself formerly a journalist, is clearly at home. However, she also reveals herself sensitive to the angst of the single career woman who so easily cuts herself off from intimacy and involvement with others.

The story is told in three parts, one devoted to each protagonist; thus we see each character intimately from within her own story, but also see her from the perspective of the others. Wright uses this technique of complementary stories very effectively to document the distance that separates these three friends.

This is a well-written, thought-provoking analysis of the dilemma of the independent working woman who lives alone.