Book details a friendship both lasting and unlikely

Will Schwalbe’s new memoir, “We Should Not Be Friends,” explores an unlikely bond between two men who met in college and maintained a fourdecade-long friendship.

That is the focus, but the book really shines when it delves into the ups and downs of its main characters — one in particular.

When the story begins in the early 1980s, Schwalbe is a Latin and Greek major whose friend circle comprises writers, theater enthusiasts and fellow gay students on the Yale University campus.

Through his induction into a secret society, Schwalbe is thrust into close quarters with a few Yale jocks — one of whom, a wrestler known almost universally by his last name, Maxey — is the other titular “Friend.”

Schwalbe and Chris Maxey form an improbable kinship that endures as they confront a litany of life’s challenges.

The book scrutinizes the two-way nature of friendship and the difficulty in maintaining one. This is all good stuff, but “We Should Not Be Friends” is not at its best in this realm. It does shine, however, when the reader learns more about Maxey and his goings-on. His time as a Navy SEAL. His efforts to start a school from scratch in the Bahamas. A medical diagnosis that is eerily similar to one that befell his biological father.

Schwalbe, who lives in New York with his partner and eventual husband, sees Maxey at several Yale reunions, dinners in New York and visits him in the Bahamas a couple of times. Frankly, a book written solely about Maxey would have worked nicely. That’s OK, though. There’s plenty of Maxey-centric material to keep things interesting.

Plus, there’s also a thoughtful examination of the times that the pals fell short of being there for one another. And how they always managed to right the (friend) ship.

“Had it not been for Maxey, the me that is here today wouldn’t be me,” Schwalbe pens.

Written like a true friend.

Schwalbe