We Can Still Be Friends

Definitely something new, this work took me by surprise. I especially enjoyed the story as it was told from four different viewpoints. While this is not a new technique, author Kelly Cherry handled it with grace and determination. A fresh voice in the sea of nowadays writers, I look forward to reading more by this brilliant author. Kudos to Ms. Cherry for her atmospheric and pleasurable writing that comes to life on the page.

At a time when the publishing industry divides fiction into two rigid categories, "commercial" - meaning it's readable and entertainingly plotted but trashy -- and "literary" - meaning it's pretentious, overwritten, and academic and no one in their right minds would read it for pleasure - Kelly Chery is successfully writing fiction that straddles the two: it's smart, meaningful, lyrically written, and enjoyable. Isn't that what readers really want? Other reviews here have summarized "We Can Still Be Friends" and praised its feminism. I'll avoid redundancy by not doing the former; and as a "guy," I'm not that concerned with the latter (except in the sense that the novel neatly taught me some things about the ways women think and feel). But what really struck me about this book, in contrast to a lot of "women's novels" and contrary to what a previous reviewer said, was the depth and sympathy with which the male characters were drawn. Cherry obviously worked conscientiously at that aspct of the book, and it paid off. Boyd, the movie producer, is quite nonstereotypical for his profession, and for me he was the most interesting and complex of the quartet. Tony, the multiracial heart surgeon who is tensely balanced between selfishness and generosity, came in a close second. Though it's true that the two women, Ava and Claire, are the driving forces of the action, the characterizations of Boyd and Tony may show the author's gifts even more impressively.

Kelly Cherry's WE CAN STILL BE FRIENDS isn't for the faint-hearted. She's delving into the great problems of what it means to be a feminist and the eternal questions of the battles between the sexes. WE CAN STILL BE FRIENDS is a deeply humane book.

Kelly Cherry's "We Can Still Be Friends" takes the common dumping line to create an empowerment novel for women. The two key female characters do what they have to do to be happy and feel fullfilled. The men are ways to means in the novel, and appear to lose their strength from early in the novel as the women grow. It is romance in the modern world. The novel is pure enjoyment as Cherry uses her lyrical voice and humor to move the plot in a very unusual situation.

The fad of sad-sack single gal books has almost run its course, because the majority are poorly written, redundant (ie anything by Jane Greene, et al) and witless; no we don't need another reference to Jimmy Choo shoes (wild) or tears in the pint of Hagen Daes. Kelly Cherry, unlike her competitors, is an actual poet and a literate writer who can reference allusions beyond the Brady Bunch. Though this can look, from the surface, like just another swingle's love lost book, it's a beautifully observed, poignant and poetic look at what it means to be human and feel deeply.