Skip to Main Content (Press Enter)
Absent Friends by S.J. Rozan
Add Absent Friends to bookshelf
Add to Bookshelf

Absent Friends

Best Seller
Absent Friends by S.J. Rozan
Ebook
Sep 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780440335092

Buy from Other Retailers:

  • Sep 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780440335092

    Buy from Other Retailers:

Product Details

Praise

"Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It’s an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it’s the one this great New York author was born to write."
—Lee Child

"The best contemporary novels create context for shared experiences that somehow remain unfathomable. Full of surprises from page one, ABSENT FRIENDS is one of those–S.J. Rozan has written an ambitious, solemn, and ultimately hopeful book that shouldn’t be missed."
—Stephen White

"S.J. Rozan is, hands-down, one of my favorite crime writers working today. To read her is to experience the kind of pure pleasure that only a master can deliver."
—Dennis Lehane

"Rozan has you looking over your shoulder into the dark."
—Michael Connelly

"S.J. Rozan has written the most consistently compelling series of traditional detective novels published in this decade. Now is the time to discover what Rozan’s loyal readership has known all along."
—George Pelecanos

"Okay, listen up: This woman can write!"
—Robert Crais

"A riveting offering reminiscent of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River … unforgettable."
Booklist, starred review

"Be grateful to S.J. Rozan … a gut-wrenching, beautifully and carefully written saga about life and about death, and about the heartache and the joy and the hope and the despair that occur in the time that passes between one and the other."
–Deadly Pleasures

"Rozan is a wonderful and insightful writer, and she creates an intricate, intimate portrait of a group of 40-something New Yorkers coping with a city in ruins."
Publishers Weekly, starred review 

"ABSENT FRIENDS is a meditation on love, loss and enduring friendships as filtered through the shattering aftermath of 9/11. … Without question one of the year’s standout novels."
Baltimore Sun

"Absent Friends is a look at the nature of heroes, friendship, truth and self-knowledge….. The final chapter is richly heartbreaking and awe-inspiring."
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"Rozan, who has won all the crime-genre awards for her Bill Smith/Lydia Chin detective titles, breaks away from that series with a novel that could stand proudly beside those of the masters, Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos."–The New York Daily News
"The story revolves around four boys and three girls — their childhoods, myriad backgrounds and families — and the men and women they become…. Rozan delivers a rich, sophisticated view of New Yorkers whose lives, like so many others, were so vastly changed on that September morning."
The Newport News Daily Press
"Add S.J. Rozan to the list of artists and writers addressing the legacy of 9/11. Her ambitious ABSENT FRIENDS uses that event as the backdrop for a heartbreaking story about secrets, loyalty and our primal need for heroes."
–Seattle Times

Author Q&A

Bookreporter.com questions for S.J. Rozan


1. When did you decide to depart from your series writing and do a book that included 9/11/01 as a central event? 

Like a lot of writers, I was paralyzed by Sept. 11th. At first, writing fiction seemed completely meaningless, an impossibly trivial activity. But I’ve always believed that, while non-fiction deals with reality, fiction deals with truth. I began to think that writing about the event and about life in New York in the days and weeks after might be possible, that it would be valuable to record what was happening around me. It was NOT possible right then for me to write about anything else, so I began, tentatively, to try.
 
2. Reading this book recalls Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River since both deal with relationships and childhood friendships. There are parallels to Small Town by Lawrence Block, which in part concerned how the terror attacks rippled through the lives of individuals who were connected to each other in ways which were not immediately obvious. You take a somewhat similar approach in Absent Friends, but from a much different, and very original, perspective. What inspired your approach, especially the ensemble construction of Absent Friends?


The impact of Sept. 11th can’t really be felt when you think of "3,000 dead." Each person who died was someone particular, with a present and a past; and each death scored deeply into numerous other lives that then had to go on. I wanted to get at those facts by starting with people who had a long-established set of relationships before Sept. 11th. I was also interested in the idea that people in crisis are who they always were and respond in ways their entire lives shaped them to respond. So I wanted to show who these people were from their young days, some of them from childhood.
 
3. Jimmy, in many ways, is the personification of all of the firefighters who died in the line of duty on September 11, but on your website you say his personality was based on one particular firefighter. What more can you share with readers about this? Are any of the other friends modeled upon childhood friends of yours?

The firefighter Jimmy was drawn from was a very private man and it wouldn’t be right to talk about him, except to say I made significant changes in Jimmy’s circumstances to make him unrecognizable. What I can say is that even from my days as an architect, when my firm did a number of firehouses, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of a career that’s nine parts sitting around and one part risking your life, and intrigued by the people who choose that career.

No other character was modeled directly on any individual, though some have parts of the personalities or physical characteristics of friends of mine. But the childhood the kids share was in some ways my childhood in the Bronx.
 
4. Does any one character in Absent Friends stand out as your personal favorite? If so, which one, and why? Was it more difficult to write about some characters than others?


No one stands out as a favorite—I think that’s like asking about a favorite child—but the one who surprised me was Phil Constantine. He grew on me and I developed a fondness for him I hadn’t planned. I’d intended him to be a lot more stiff and humorless than he turned out. This happens to me all the time, by the way, characters becoming somehting different from what I’d expected.

The character who gave me the most trouble at first was Laura. I think that’s because her personal loss happened so early in the book, before I had a chance to get to know her. It was hard just to plunge in and write about someone in such emotional pain. It took me a few tries before she suddenly came to life.

5. What do you want readers to take with them from Absent Friends?

I wrote the book to explore issues around the nature and uses of truth, heroism, and friendship. I have no answers to any of the questions I raise but I’d like people to take away the idea that these are questions that have to be asked over and over. What seems obvious may not be true and what’s true may not always be right.

6. What was the most rewarding part of writing Absent Friends?


Watching the different parts of the complex structure actually coalesce into a single story. It wasn’t clear to me when I started that I’d be able to make that happen.

7. Many of those who live outside the city have a far different perspective than those who live here; no different than the way that New Yorkers may not appreciate fully the depths of the destruction in Florida and other parts of the South following this hurricane season. Are you interested to see how readers outside New York will react to this book?

Absolutely. I’ve had readers from other parts of the country say they’ve been looking for a way to understand what it was like here. I hope this book can help give them some perspective on that.
 
8. What can your readers expect from you in the future? Do you plan more series novels, or more stand-alone works like Absent Friends? Or both? Are there any plans to publish a collection of your short stories in the future? And do you plan to present any of the characters from Absent Friends, however peripherally, into your Smith & Chin novels?

I do plan to continue the series, and also to do more stand-alones. My next book will be another stand-alone, again set in New York and called In this Rain (Delacorte). After that, another Lydia Chin book. There will be short story collection, but I’m not sure when. As for the characters from Absent Friends, I don’t think they’ll be back. This was their story; it’s been told.

Looking for More Great Reads?
21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read
Back to Top