Best Friends — Thomas Berger

Roy Courtright is good-looking, healthy, independent, well liked, and the owner of a successful classic car dealership. His best friend, Sam Grandy, is the near inverse: married, a spendthrift, overweight, needy, and near bankruptcy. Yet they've been inseparable best friends since childhood. As best friends, they share a close and loving bond, often stronger than the relationships other men share with their girlfriends, siblings, even wives.

But in the twenty years since their friendship began, those fundamental differences have become more apparent and their relationship has grown strained. When the two friends encounter serious problems, they're forced to reckon with each other. Do these differences threaten their friendship -- or are the dissimilarities what make it possible? Can they escape the ties of their past, or are they intrinsically bound until death?

When Sam's health begins to falter, he draws Roy into his life again -- and into a chain of deceit, sex, delusion, death, and love such as only a best friend could. With exquisite wit and insidious wisdom, Best Friends weaves a powerful tale about friendship -- and the complex loyalties involved.