Tangerine by Christine Mangan

They are the best of friends, Alice Morgan and Lucy Shipley.  They are close as only two roommates in college can get, both strangers but finding friendship and a feeling of family with each other.  Alice comes from money but is a fragile child whose parents died in an accident and who has been raised by a brusque aunt who never wanted children.  Lucy has fought hard to escape her childhood poverty and make a better life for herself than any of her relatives had.  Soon they are inseparable and make plans to build lives together after college and to never be apart.

But those are childish plans.  When Alice meets a man who woos her, she is torn away and starts to build a life on her own.  Lucy can't believe it and is furious.  She starts to treat Alice horribly, making her doubt her memories and attempting to make her feel guilty enough that she will leave the man and come back to her solitary friendship with Lucy.  She isn't making much headway with Alice until the accident that changes Alice's life again.

Now Alice is making yet another life.  She has hastily met and married a man who has taken her away to Tangier.  He is in his element there, scheming and partying with the other expatriates but Alice is lost and lonely.  But she isn't lonely enough that she is anything but shocked when she opens her door and finds Lucy on the doorstep.  How did she track Alice down?  What does she want?  What will she do to get her way?

Mangan has written a study on feminine friendships and the ways that jealousy and single mindedness can wreck a relationship.  Many readers will remember a time when they were involved in the same kind of close knit relationship.  But for most of us, that time is early adolescence and the friendship either matures and grows or is discarded along the way.  Mangan explores what happens when one party will do anything to keep the other in a strangling hold through emotional blackmail.  The atmosphere is one of the book's strengths and this debut novel makes Mangan an author to be watched.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction and mysteries.