Fergus, Quondam Happy Face's Reviews > The Friend

In postmodern novels like this, it it hard to tell WHO the title refers to. At first we think that surely it is the narrator’s friend Wife Three. She is the third wife of the narrator’s philandering Husband One.

Husband One has just killed himself, and Wife Three unloads her heart to her.

The Narrator is deeply touched, but much less so when Wife Three unloads the Great Dane the philanderer has left bereft. But since Nature abhors a vacuum, the narrator, Wife One, is now in an existential free fall, as Wife Three has put her in touch with her emotions once again after Husband One cyrogenetically froze her heart by first, his behaviour, then his suicide.

So then Wife Three unloads his suffering Great Dane on her.

The dog for Wife One will prove to be a life buoy!

Sure now, we know HE is The Friend. For he saves her from Clinical Depression. His dependency upon her is something she can return.

My own depression after suffering workplace burnout when I was 56 was resolved by our pet cockatiel, Bebe as we called him. A rescue pet, when we picked him up at the pet shelter he had just had lost two frost-bitten toes.

We were rescuers for each other, with the music of Bach also healing us. Thank Heaven I had a comfortable pension!

When he died of heart failure last month, at 74 the bottom fell out of my life again.

Now it’s my wife who makes me strong again. Again, shared empathy.

Now: don’t let anyone ever tell you Love never heals your wounds.

For it always does when experience makes it solidly OBJECTIVE!