Why I Killed My Best Friend
Amanda Michalopoulou
Open Letter 2013, 257pg
Amanda Michalopoulou’s short story collection I’d Like was a particular favorite at By the Fire Light, so it is particular excitement that I review her newest book to come out in English, Why I Killed My Best Friend. Originally published in Greece in 2003, it is at once a reflection of that time and the current troubles in Greece. The political events that take place in the book make this a departure from I’d Like’s more literary explorations, nevertheless, Why I Killed My Best Friend has some deft touches that make the book resonate.
Briefly, the story follows two friends, Maria and Anna, from childhood to adulthood. Maria comes from a middle class family who is part of the establishment, and her best friend Maria comes from a revolutionary family, whose parents teach revolution and do not lead anything like a middle class life. It is a friendship filled with conflict, Anna dominating the relationship with her certain positions on politics and life. Even at an young age, Anna repeats leftist political slogans and criticizes Maria for her lack of commitment. The bond is so strong that as they grow and Anna becomes more and more mercurial, Maria becomes the one who commits herself to politics, letting her art become subservient to activism. Maria is the one who goes to the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. Anna? She marries and architect who says he is a radical in his designs, but it ultimately sounds as if he is just spouting some cultural theory that justifies in action.
From this brief sketch, we have two conflicting lives that are bound with a friendship that is at times intense other times spiteful. It is Anna who always steals Maria’s boyfriends—she is the better looking of them, according to Maria. Neither finds in their rebellion much success. Anna, is more mercurial, listless, uninterested in the politics that Maria has dedicated her life to. Maria, is fighting the good fight, but as much as she loves Anna and the struggle, she is always finding herself in a disadvantageous position. All her battles end in a certain failure and if the political ones can be absorbed, the personal ones that have seen her defeated at the hands of her best friend, leave her unhappy. You get a sense of frustration that permeates what is ostensibly a story of friendship. With friends like these…
While the relationship is interesting, the politics are not so much as uninteresting, but unconnected. They are a mini reportage of the movements of the 80s and 90s, but they appear as name dropping. Perhaps that is the point, that Maria’s reasoning behind her actions are less thought out and are more a reaction to Anna. In this sense the politics do not feel a strange reminder of battles forgotten, as much as battles unexplained. For the reader they are a backdrop, not the raison d’entre of the novel, and in this sense they are interesting, a kind of greatest hits.
Ultimately, Why I Killed My Best Friend secedes as a story of friendship. As a story of modern Greece, it is less successful. It is not as successful as I’d Like, but it is a good effort.
