A Friend’s Reception: Dale Smith reviews Shake Hands, by Carl Thayler

[para. 1]: "Our consideration of the world often forms through eyes of friends. These relations, carefully formed or abandoned with hazard, determine in us an awkward framework where emotion and intellect engage in fretful tug-of-war. That carefully exacted presence of self we bear to each other in friendship firms up or folds under the alien confrontation our relationships sustain. To form a deeper understanding of our nature we must enter with awkward certainty a recurring conflict of self-composition and presentation. Who we are and what we present ourselves to be are extended, challenged and confronted in the process of strengthening or abandoning friendships. Even those relations released of their animosity or enthusiasm provide a mundane meditation for our weaknesses and our strengths. We seek hints of ourselves in another’s confirmation, or denial. We embrace with love the sudden release of fire from the unknown that surprises us in another. A delicate mission, perhaps, to kindle friendship or extend love, but such is the structure of a psychology burdened by confrontation of animal hunger."