Set in a rural landscape as vivid as its characters, As a Friend tells the story of a gifted young man, a land surveyor, whose impact on those around him provokes intense self-examination and charged eroticism. With poetic insight, Gander explores the nature of attraction, betrayal, and loyalty. Beautifully written and suffused with a pastoral nostalgia, As a Friend is brilliant in style and unsettling.

"Profound, relentlessly beautiful, this exceptional book catches fire again and again. One runs with it as across a bed of coals, unable to look away, unable to stop for an instant, even to take a breath. Breathtaking, yes, and unceasingly blazing." –Rikki Ducornet

“A restlessly experimental writer.” –Robert Hass

EXCERPT: from As a Friend

I would guess that Les was a liar not just because it was expedient, but because he took lying to be creative. He lied not only about his wife Cora, his girlfriend Sarah, his lovers, but about everything. I heard him lie to the man we were supposed to meet at ten a.m. about a surveying job we were late for, when at ten a.m. he was screwing around with the bartender and didn’t pick me up until after eleven. He lied so fluently, with such an instinct for the unexpected detail, he could make me think he’d seen a movie I knew for a fact he didn’t see. He lied to his editor about money he’d been sent to conduct an interview he’d never done with some famous writer. He’d lie about a jar of peanut butter in Quinton’s office kitchen. He had a perfect ear. He could imitate any bird, and he was the first bird watcher I ever knew. He could walk out of Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries”—after convincing us to drive to Fayetteville to watch it, talking up the movie into an event we would sooner gnaw our arms off than miss—and later that night, after innumerable shots of bourbon, freeze us at The High Hat with a panoramic gaze across the table and a mumbled monologue in what I would have sworn was Swedish.

It was because I was drawn to him and because he didn’t have time for me that I began to see more of Sarah. I’d visit with her at the bookstore where she worked and I’d listen, at the house, while she practiced her cello. We’d talk about Les. He was our narcotic.