This is a painful book about two friends who meet in college, Dexter and Emma. Painful because we watch them grow up. I do not want to go back to that time, and have to relive all those moments, but the book takes us through them, none-the-less. Dex and Emma have a bit of an attraction for one another at the time, but they are both about to graduate. They do not pursue the physical relationship then, or as they move through their twenties and into their thirties--or not much, at least (an occasional flirt with something more)--but they do keep hold of their friendship. The book is told in a series of meetings over the years. We watch the optimistic Emma struggle with job and work and love and writing, while Dexter seems to sail through effortlessly. He is a TV host for a less than intellectual show, which brings him money, recognition, and women. All of which he is quite sure he deserves. Emma is the only person in his life who will tell him that he really is just an ordinary man who has yet to grow up.
But then there is the inevitable fall from grace for Dexter, and the paying off of hard work for Emma that changes their friendship. The book is wonderfully paced and very hard to put down.
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