Die perfekte Freundin

by Lionel Shriver

Weston liebt Paige, doch als es ans Heiraten geht, verlangt sie von ihm ein Opfer. Er soll sich von seiner langjährigen Freundin – und Ex-Flamme – Jillian lossagen, die Paige schon immer etwas zu einnehmend, zu schillernd, kurz: zu gefährlich fand. Weston setzt sich zur Wehr. Aber beweist das nicht, dass Paige mit ihrer Forderung ins Schwarze trifft?
Nur wenige Schriftsteller beherrschen es, Konflikte so unmerklich und gründlich eskalieren zu lassen wie Lionel Shriver. Schonungslos und heiter erzählt sie von Vertrauen, Vereinnahmung und den Entbehrungen, die wir für die Liebe auf uns nehmen.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Short Stories, Novella, Friendship

160 pages, Hardcover

Published November 30, 2020

About the author

Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.

Author photo copyright Jerry Bauer, courtesy of Harper Collins.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Has Limits

When A loves B, and B loves C, but C hates A, none of the relations are stable. Especially if B is a male who defines himself by these relations and therefore puts himself emotionally at the mercy of females A and C. Thanks to B, everyone is confused and hapless. Men! Who’d have ‘em?

Women are more resilient than men, less naive and generally more capable of guile. Is that sexist? Perhaps. But that’s Shriver’s opinion, and I trust her. Personally, I’ve never understood why women aren’t the only candidates for Army generalships, which demand strategy-savvy intelligence; and why men aren’t restricted to the lower ranks that require only myopic muscle.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can men and women every really just be friends—best friends? This is the question at the heart of Lionel Shriver's new novella.

When Weston asks Paige to marry him, she says yes under one condition: Weston must end his friendship with his best friend of 25 years, Jillian, who Paige despises.

Though barely over 100 pages, The Standing Chandelier is packed with Shriver's mesmerizingly sharp insight and analysis of human behavior.

Are the judgments that we make about others accurate, or are they merely borne from our own misguided presumptions? Inevitably, both, and this will always pose a challenge for relationships of any kind.

This was a completely captivating read that had me empathizing with everyone involved.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Social relations are tricky. Sometimes you have a natural rapport with a person. Sometimes you wish for a stronger friendship than someone wants to give you. Sometimes you receive attention from a person you have no interest in being friends with. Lionel Shriver has an unerring knack for cutting through social niceties and portraying the psychology of her characters in a disarmingly candid manner. In her new novella “The Standing Chandelier” she presents Jillian Frisk: a loud, opinionated, colourful woman with an artistic sensibility. She knows she rubs many people the wrong way but forges on regardless. She’s close friends with Weston who is more of a natural introvert. After years of this friendship, he develops a serious romance with a woman named Paige who can’t stand Jillian. Weston and Jillian’s once reliable friendship becomes threatened. This story asks many tensely awkward questions about our social natures, the emotional risks of intimacy and the limits of friendship.

Read my full review of The Standing Chandelier by Lionel Shriver on LonesomeReader

[Kate Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book broke my heart. They characters felt so real I felt I was reading a memoir instead of a work of fiction.

[Emma Monfries · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything that Lionel Shriver does and always drop everything to read her, and this little novella was another cracker. Jillian and Baba have been best friends for 25 years. Both are unusual people who totally accept and love one another unconditionally. They’ve slept together a few times over the years, but it’s really their lovely friendship that has endured. Jillian is a fascinating character and I loved her; quirky and strange and creative. Baba is loyal and thoughtful and I loved the purity of their friendship. Then Baba proposes to his girlfriend Paige, and everything changes in ways the reader does not see coming. Shriver writes really relatable characters with an unflinching honesty, and she really knows human nature. There are sections of this story that I think most people would read and nod and think, ‘Yes, I know how that feels too.’ Read it all in one go as it’s short, but more so because it’s unputdownable. Loved it, highly recommended.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shriver writes so well about the human condition that even the most minute and mundane of details of domestic life are a pleasure to read. This emotional, but not literal, menage a trois is sympathetic to all three flawed characters and their contradicting yet understandable standpoints. And that is the simple joy of this novella; the author gives the reader the generous responsibility of deciding on who is morally at fault. A perfect, short, snappy and sophisticated novella.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spotted one of my Goodreads friends reading this, and purchased a copy for my Kindle. I really enjoy Shriver's writing, and whilst I've not even got through more than one of her novels to date, I wanted to see how she would craft a shorter work stylistically. The main nub of The Standing Chandelier - can a man and woman be 'just friends'? - sounded rather twee and overdone, and is something I would ordinarily avoid. I was more than intrigued by the way in which Shriver might handle it, however, and was pleasantly impressed. She manages to avoid an awful lot of cliched tropes, and creates an exploration which is more unusual than usual.

The prose throughout the novella is intelligent and taut, as I was expecting, and I was pulled in straight away. Shriver still involves a lot of depth when crafting her characters, and both Weston and Jillian come across as fully-formed and believable individuals. Darkly funny at times, the story carries one through from beginning to end at a perfectly adjusted pace. Rather than lose herself in the constrained form, or having to drop more interesting elements of storyline in order to obey the conventions of the novella, The Standing Chandelier is rather perfect in terms of its size. Yes, it can be read in a couple of hours, but it still feels rich, and has a lot of emotional depth to it.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took awhile to get into this novella but an okay novel but not a master piece though

[SueKich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two's company, three's a superb novella.

Since their long-ago college days, Jillian Frisk has been best friends with Weston Babansky (whom she calls Baba). They share a love of tennis, talking and each other. The friendship has even survived consummation - two periods over the years when they ‘got it on’ together. But can their relationship possibly survive Paige Myer, the new woman in Baba’s life?

This slight novella – just 122 pages – is packed full of Lionel Shriver’s signature wit, sharp observation and her insight into human interaction and frailties. “We are all audiences of our own lives…” I have a feeling that who readers side with in this rather saddening triangular story will engender fierce debate and I look forward to reading further reviews.

[Simona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lionel Shriver mercilessly draws a friendship between a man and a woman that lasts until a third person appears. Through characterization, the author successfully managed to capture not only the complexity of male/female friendship, but also the broader interpersonal relationships that, sooner or later (or at least in this story) become a battlefield for enforcing will and power.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short but powerful novella, Lionel Shriver asks the age-old question: Can men and women ever be just friends?

When Weston proposes to his longtime girlfriend Paige, her acceptance comes with one condition: He must sever ties with his best friend of 25 years and old flame, Jillian. When Jillian gives the couple an intensely personal and extravagant engagement gift, dubbed The Standing Chandelier, the complicated relationship triangle is made all the messier. The gift is large, awkward and inconvenient, signifying the elephant in the room that is Weston and Jillian’s cloudy relationship.

Anyone who’s been in a serious relationship will relate to this on both sides of the spectrum. Readers will find themselves empathizing with every character, yet also wanting to shake them out of their stupidity at other times. Read it in one sitting to experience the full intensity.

[Susan Liston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so often seem to miss the point of things I'm sure I missed some here, but overall I'm torn as to how I felt about this. I can't say I LIKED it, but obviously it got my attention. I was surprisingly involved with the characters, to the point that I was really distressed when I finished it and had to remind myself to calm down, its fiction, already. But I don't care how annoying Jillian may have been, I was completely on her side as I hated really, really hated Weston and Paige. I'm getting mad again just writing this. I want her to write a sequel and kill them off, in a grisly and gruesome manner. Now THAT I would love.

[Mind the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who put the skön in skönlitteratur?! Längtade efter något nytt och med Lionel Shriver kan man lita på att det är originellt och välgestaltat, alltid med fantasifullt språk. Allitteration och assonans förekommer frekvent i detta kompakta verk.

Är också svag för tennisspelande karaktärer* både i romaner och på film. Här är de två. De har spelat i åratal och även haft en liten fling förr. Nu träffar den ena en livspartner och det blir drama.

*Namnet Weston Babansky är helt klart woodyallen:esque.

[Madalina Nastase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh Lionel, please keep on writing.

[Patrick O'Donoghue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Lionel Shriver. I think she is a very clever lady, and anyone who has seen or read her interviews will know this.
I loved, and was shocked by, her most famous novel, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, which was passed from teacher to teacher of the school I worked in at the time, with opinions and thoughts being shared over soup and sandwiches at the staffroom table.
I skipped her follow-up, ‘The Post Birthday World’, but thought the follow-up to that, ‘So Much For That’ was astounding, and almost as horrifiying as ‘Kevin’ in many ways. It was also strangely under-appreciated in my opinion. I thought the writing was sharp, the relationships realistic, and the topic relevant to the time.
Again I missed out her next novel [The New Republic], but was disappointed by its follow-up, ‘Big Brother’.
By pure coincidence I apparently only read her novels alternately, so missed out on ‘The Mandibles’, and landed on this novella, ‘The Standing Chandelier.’
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
I really wanted to enjoy this book. I thought the premise was excellent - a man being given the ultimatum to give up his lifelong (and occasionally intimate) friendship with Jillian Frisk for the hand in marriage of Paige Myers. I thought the drama was probably quite realistic. I imagined if I was Paige I would probably have the same conditions. My biggest problem was the ‘standing chandelier’ itself, which was large, unwieldy, awkward, and which sounded quite ugly. But maybe that was the point? Paige will accept anything if it inevitably gets her what she wants.

[Natalie M · Rating 4 out of 5]

The conditions of friendship or the societal parameters we place among ourselves...when are we allowed certain relationships - actual or implied? This novella has the makings of a classic scholars in time to come will read to see how we viewed relationships at the start of the 21st century.
Weston Babansky has been friends (and occasional lover of) Jillian Frisk for 25 years but a marriage proposal places the ultimate ultimatum on their friendship. This societal dilemma (many of us frequently avoid by discarding these relationships when our own lives change paths) is followed closely by a moral debate about gift giving...
4 stars because it takes a particular talent to position the reader in a thought-provoking conundrum in just 129 pages. Can one have an intense platonic relationship?
Well written, interesting vocabulary and characters with a fair amount of substance, despite not being that likeable. Well worth contemplating.

[Regina Andreassen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it! A stupendous, captivating novella! The Standing Chandelier is insightful, sharp, clever, witty, and most importantly: has an original and compelling storyline. In The Standing Chandelier, Lionel Shriver intelligently examines human relationships and scrutinises the reasons that trigger certain behaviour. There is nothing frivolous about this book and not a single line or word was wasted. In fact, I wish the book was longer, I wanted more!

The protagonists, Jillian and Weston,
are unique and colourful, yet, they do not come across as mere caricatures for they feel very real and so do their interactions. The themes explored in this book posit important questions, which I believe readers will respond/address differently.

Overall, The Standing Chandelier is an outstanding book which grabbed my attention from page one! The Standing Chandelier is a must-read and also a must re-read!

[Amanda Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can men and women ever be just friends? Lionel Shriver has written a story that examines the fine line between friendship and how people try to own each other in relationships.

When Weston Babansky receives an engagement present from his best friend, Jillian Frisk, he and his fiancée, Paige are unsettled. It’s a huge, handmade sculpture that they would have to live with forever. Paige decides that Jillian has to go.

Shriver is good at highlighting the pettiness in relationships and the meanness that develops as possessiveness turns into anger. The novella still feels hollow though, and this may have something to do with the non-existent plot, unappealing characters, and the flimsily poor dialogue.

The characters and their stories really didn’t matter to me, but maybe this is what Shriver was aiming for?

[Rodrigo Acuna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The complexities of sex and friendship dissected "

An excellent novella that covers more territory than most 500 page books, and makes you take sides like you do when a couple splits.

I loved the writing; the characters felt real, and the plot was well constructed without being obvious. I was surprised how involved I was, I laughed and felt sad for them; what more could you ask from a book.

A real find that left me thinking.

[Eileen Holmes-ievers · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a superb book, I couldn't put it down. Lionel Shriver has a very distinctive writing style that can can be quite hard to 'get into into', but once you have clicked, the books are a reading pleasure. This book, at times, could be a bit pretentious but it did mean I learnt a few new words!

It's a novella, so can be read in a few hours and you get to know the 3 main characters well. I think people will end up being #TeamPaige or #TeamJillian. I am in the Jillian Camp.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little story about love and friendship and the consequences of having to choose between the two. Very well observed. Funny too.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

So let’s say Harold Pinter and Oscar Wilde sat down and decided to rewrite When Harry Met Sally. I know. How else to describe this book? The Times opted for, “Shriver has something of the John Updike or Patricia Highsmith eye;” EVENT Magazine went with, “at its sharpest, it’s downright Austen-esque” and The Evening Standard called it “a short, brutal gem of a novel” which it is too.

There are only three characters in it: Jillian Frisk (forty-three and “purposely purposeless”), her best friend Bobo (a.k.a. Weston Babansky) (forty-five and “something of a recluse, who [keeps] odd hours and [does] his best work at four a.m.”) and Weston’s long-standing-girlfriend-and-soon-to-become-fiancée Paige Myers (tactfully described as “a somewhat younger woman” with “a compact figure and a sombre, muted style”).

Whereas Weston has certain eccentricities Jillian is a dyed-in-the-wool oddball. As such she’s often misunderstood at best and disliked more often than not for no better reason than she’s different. To use Weston’s expression, “You have a strong flavour.” Which Jillian acknowledges although she still finds being disliked bewildering although she does try to “always to see her detractor’s point of view:”

For an intrinsic facet of being disliked was racking your brain for whatever it was that rubbed other people so radically the wrong way. They rarely told you to your face, so you were left with a burgeoning list of obnoxious characteristics that you compiled for them. So Jillian would demote her garb from festive to garish or even vulgar, and suddenly see how her offbeat thrift shop ensembles, replete with velvet vests, broad belts, tiered skirts, and enough scarves to kill Isadora Duncan three times over, could seem to demonstrate attention-seeking behaviour. A clear, forceful voice was to the leery merely loud, and whenever she suppressed the volume the better to give no offense, she simply became inaudible, which was maddening, too.

Fortunately, though, she has Bobo who has no trouble seeing past her falderalness. Although they’ve been friends for years there have been times—two times to be precise—when their relationship devolved—evolved? side-shifted? not sure—to the level “of what [was] then called fuck buddies and later friends with benefits.” But that’s all in the past:

Jillian loved Baba in a round, encompassing, roomy way, and if she still found him technically attractive, the sensation was purely aesthetic. She enjoyed being in his physical company the way she enjoyed sitting in a smartly decorated restaurant. This pleasing feeling didn’t induce any need to do something about it, any more than she ever experienced the urge to fuck a dining room.

[…]

They had known each other for twenty-four years, and never in all that time had an interloper laid claim to the superlative. That exercise in mutual devastation was inoculating, and raised the relationship to what at least felt like a higher spiritual plane. Post-romance, post-sex, neither was tortured with curiosity about the twining of each other’s limbs. Baba wasn’t circumcised; Jillian refused to shave her bikini line: their secrets were out. It was a certain bet that, having survived the worst, they really would be best friends forever, thereby proving to the rest of the world that there was such a thing.

They meet three times a week—Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays—to play tennis. That’s their thing. And everything had been going swimmingly for years until Paige installed herself in Weston’s life and the two women come head to head:

Their first meeting: That hadn’t been a slightly inept young woman with a tendency to blurt her fiercely held convictions. It was an outburst of immediate, uncontrollable aversion of a kind Jillian should have recognized. Because Paige would already have heard as much about Jillian as Jillian had heard about her, chances were high that Paige had prehated her, much as one preorders a book, or a burial plot.

But Jillian, being Jillian, doesn’t see the signs. Weston has no choice but to see them but he’s keen for the two women in his life to get on and he does everything he can to pour oil on troubled waters and prays things will get better. Like that’s going to happen. The thing is he really has the best of both worlds with these two. Jillian meets some of his needs and Paige satisfies the rest. That his best friend and the woman who’s to become his wife were going to very different people was to be expected. That even he could see. That he was going to have to choose between the two comes as a great surprise to him. Which it shouldn’t have. But then he’s not the savviest.

“A lifelong procrastinator,” Weston delays taken decisive action for as long as possible “[b]ecause he [has] just enough wit to realize that, when you announce a relationship is going to be over, it is over right then.” And he doesn’t want it to be over. Any of it. And yet he has to choose.

Shriver’s powers of observation and her ability to drill down the essence of the problem are complemented by an enviable ability to provide well-defined characters with sparkling (and yet believable) dialogue. There are a few authors out there like, for example, Jeanette Winterson, who, no matter what I read by them, immediately fill me with a desire to write. If the rest of Shriver’s work comes up to this standard (this is the only thing of hers I’ve read) I‘ll happy add her to this select list. She made me think a bit of what Anita Brookner might’ve been like if she’d developed a taste for writing badinage.

For a novella which you know is going to end badly there’s a lot packed into this and Shriver does make you feel for all three characters. Even Paige. It’s easy to think of Paige as the bad guy but really what she is is a catalyst although not in a chemical sense because no one survives this book unscathed and all three of the them get to slip on the bad guy’s hat to see how it fits.

I loved this book but not everyone has. In his review for South China Morning Post Mike Cormack says, “Lionel Shriver disappoints with flimsy plot and thinly drawn characters.” He also thinks she “displays a tin ear for dialogue.” The man is, of course, entitled to his opinion and you should read what he has to say but I think it all boils down to taste and expectation; We Need to Talk About Kevin this is not and why should it be?

Me? I’m giving it five stars and I didn’t have to think long and hard about that.

[Nick Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really very fulfilling. This short novel about the friendship between a man and a woman, and how this changes, was a demonstration not only of Shriver’s literary talent but also her observational intellect. At a little over a hundred pages it didn’t feel overly strung out, and neither did it come over as foreshortened - well judged, witty and thought-provoking, it creditably assumes a level of intelligence in the reader. Though maybe I’d not behave like the characters within, though I did at times feel they had qualities foreign to me, there is plenty here which is human nature and relevance to most.

[clumsyplankton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a pretty good short read

[Dragana - Karmaversum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich dachte mir beim Lesen nur, heftig wie subtil gehässig und garstig Frauen sein können und der Mann merkt es nicht mal.

[Andy – And The Plot Thickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is, while brilliant, left me feeling quite morose.

It is a hard-hitting and unflinching look at friendships between men and women, close frienships, and what happens when a third person enters the equation in the form of a serious romance.

Weston Babanksy and Jillian Flisk have been friends for nearly 25 decades. They had two brief flings with each other but managed to keep a close, honest friendship that came to define them both in many ways.

But Weston's girlfriend can't stand Jillian. Paige finds Jillian overbearing, loud, self-absorbed. She hates that Jillian calls Weston "Baba" and that Weston calls Jillian "Frisk" because it implies a possessiveness and familiarity from which Paige is excluded.

When Weston proposes to Paige, she gives him an ultimatum, to end his friendship with Frisk or risk losing his girlfriend.

Perhaps the reason this book touched me so is that I've been on the receiving end of this before: losing a very close friendship with a guy when he becomes romantically involved. While it's understandable that the friendship would change, losing someone completely really hurts.

Lionel Shriver's novella deftly explores the age-old question of whether men and women really can be friends, not the casual kind, but the kind in which someone is your go-to confidante, something with whom you're completely comfortable and whom you trust implicitly.

[Paul Snelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

No book can answer the question of can men and women be friends. But it does shed clear white light on whether these three can be friends. Shriver's prose and observations are razor sharp, and though I couldn't help but wonder whether better communication all round might have helped (it always does), there was an inevitability to the quickly developing plot. The characters are well enough drawn that I couldn't help but identify favourites and areas of blame-worthiness. They are all self absorbed I wondered about genuine connection, there seemed to a disconnection between what had to be done and how it was done. There was more than a shred of callousness which perhaps we all have potential for. There's enough here for a full novel, and it would be great on stage. Highly recommended.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first fell for Lionel Shriver after reading “we need to talk about Kevin”, and have enjoyed a couple of others of her books since then. I enjoy her insightful and dense commentary (even if it means I sometimes need to reach for a dictionary), and her characterisation, even if I rarely enjoy her characters. The same qualities are evident in this novella, and while it took a while to warm up, and lacks the suspense of a work like ‘Kevin’ it was a satisfying, if slightly sad, read. Good for filling in between larger books!

[Jaye Chin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating study of a male-female friendship which haunts way past the final page. Shriver’s characters are so believable, as to make you sympathise with each by turn. But in the end the sheer anguish of her protagonist Jillian Frisk broke my heart. You cannot break up from a 25 year old friendship can you? Or can you?

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was beautiful. The writing was wonderful and the characters feel so real to me in such a short space of time. It broke my heart a little bit. Can’t wait to listen again.