Friends of Joy: A Review

They grew up together, Bob and Bob, or Bob-bob, as their mothers called them. They played ball and Statues and Touch-Free together; they went together to Sunday School, Training Union, the movies, and when they spent the night at one or the other’s house, they slept together. Afternoon after afternoon out in a flat, sunbaked field in southwest Louisiana watching storm clouds roil up from the Gulf and lightning ravish the sky. Up to a point, relationships with a sexual component might be simpler without involving issues of gender, I believe it’s safe to say. Who among you, from whichever of the seven sexes, can truthfully deny this? Resurrections make miracles; just ask Jesus. These two friends, Bob and Bob, from almost birth, and at an age well short of puberty (about nine years short) begin to experiment sexually in the bamboo that fenced in their backyards (some experiment!) with twin sisters, eight to their four, who lived in the house on the other side of the bamboo. One afternoon when the twins are down with a cold, and Bob and Bob disappointed, one of them (what matter which one?) suggests perhaps that . . . well, what would it be like if . . . And soon thereafter the ellipses are no longer necessary, because they’re exploring one another shamelessly in the bamboo, the bathroom, the movies, back alleys — shamelessly, that is, at least under their eyes and the eyes of God. The eyes of society, well, that’s another matter. But as everyone knows, you can’t have a story without complications, therefore . . . The rest of Friends of Joy follows the usual pattern of a love story: x meets y who hesitates to meet x again but only for a moment before y plunges into the relationship with all four, I mean both of her feet, only to find out that heaven is only a temporary event meant to make babies, which art itself I see as also encouraging, even if statistically fewer artists will have children than, say, cab drivers. That’s the whole point, some would and perhaps should have us believe. Does that mean that cab drivers are in general less selfish than artists? More than likely. But novels in general do better by not generalizing, don’t you find? Not that this one entirely shies away from it. In the case of Bob and Bob, I wish them all the best at the end as they fly off to Brisbane, having left their wives and children behind at the airport, who stare at one other, pondering in ways they never have before the complexity of human existence.