Gregory a Barnes

Jane among Friends Gregory a Barnes

Jane Among Friends is a comic novel that nonetheless addresses a serious Quaker question. Its protagonist is an older American woman who, after burying her famous English husband on their Kenyan estate, embarks on new entrepreneurial adventures. The novel takes the form of letters from Jane to Hazel Tennington, her childhood friend from Baltimore, in which she feels free (sometimes tactlessnessly) to express her inmost thoughts. In the course of relating life events and interactions with the precocious primate Chulk, she comments on her marriage, on men in general, on her somewhat challenged son, and on her dear if headstrong daughter-in-law, not to mention life, death, nature, nurture, God, interspecies relations and the afterlife. As a Quaker, Jane abhors violence-an irony, son Jack points out, on a cattle farm whose chief income is supplied by a busy abattoir. Jane views such inconsistencies as questions to be held in the light. Jane among Friends will appeal to animal lovers and to feminists, as well as to Quakers who enjoy an amusing threshing session. It's a comedy, so despite pratfalls or untoward (and even violent) events, all comes right in the end.