The Friendly Ones

Author(s): Philip Hensher

Fiction

'It's the book you should give someone who thinks they don't like novels ... Here is surely a future prizewinner that is easy to read and impossible to forget' Melissa Katsoulis, The TimesThe things history will do at the bidding of loveOn a warm Sunday afternoon, Nazia and Sharif are preparing for a family barbecue. They are in the house in Sheffield that will do for the rest of their lives. In the garden next door is a retired doctor, whose four children have long since left home. When the shadow of death passes over Nazia and Sharif's party, Doctor Spinster's actions are going to bring the two families together, for decades to come.The Friendly Ones is about two families. In it, people with very different histories can fit together, and redeem each other. One is a large and loosely connected family who have come to England from the subcontinent in fits and starts, brought to England by education, and economic possibilities. Or driven away from their native country by war, murder, crime and brutal oppression - things their new neighbours know nothing about. At the heart of their story is betrayal and public shame. The secret wound that overshadows the Spinsters, their neighbours next door, is of a different kind: Leo, the eldest son, running away from Oxford University aged eighteen. How do you put these things right, in England, now?Spanning decades and with a big and beautifully drawn cast of characters all making their different ways towards lives that make sense, The Friendly Ones, Philip Hensher's moving and timely new novel, shows what a nation is made of; how the legacies of our history can be mastered by the decision to know something about people who are not like us.

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`As a fiction writer, Hensher has virtuosity on tap' New Statesman `Hensher's prose can be painterly' Financial Times `Hensher is gifted with a great virtuosity and a relentless intelligence' Guardian `Hensher is deft at locating the moment of crisis when a character experiences a change of heart or a nasty surprise, and life is exposed in all its drab wonder' Evening Standard 'Hensher is fascinatingly good on how social transformation manifests itself in the textures, colours and manners of a culture' Sunday Times `Hensher has a forensic eye for detail, providing nightmarish glimpses of the everyday' Independent

Philip Hensher is a columnist for the Independent, arts critic for the Spectator and a Granta Best of Young British novelist. He has written ten novels, including The Mulberry Empire, King of the Badgers and the Booker-shortlisted 'The Northern Clemenc, and one collection of short stories. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and lives in London.

General Fields

  • : 9780008175641
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Australia
  • : Fourth Estate Ltd
  • : 0.486
  • : December 2017
  • : 204mm X 135mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : March 2018
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Philip Hensher
  • : Hardback
  • : Hardback
  • : 318
  • : 318
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 823.92
  • : 823.92
  • : 624
  • : 624