The Friendly Ones

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Pub Date 8 Mar 2018 | Archive Date 21 May 2018

Description

‘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 Times

The things history will do at the bidding of love

On 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.

‘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 Times...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9780008175665
PRICE £5.99 (GBP)
PAGES 624

Average rating from 13 members


Featured Reviews

Essentially this is the story of two families, both living in Sheffield, one originally from Bangladesh. After an initial family barbecue at which an incident brings the neighbours together we follow their stories moving across the decades and across continents. I like the humanity of this novel and the way in which Hensher shows how our lives can be enriched by taking time to learn about each other. Some parts were less successful than others, but overall definitely a good read.

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worthy and intriguing narrative moving across a neighbourhood, and then, across time - a new Bangladeshi family moves into a suburban neighbourhood, and with their particular style of humour and family relations make impact on all around them. an early incident between son of the doctor/neighbour and Aisha, the Cambridge educated daughter of the newbies in the row is referred to over the years - as she becomes a lauded and decorated citizen, and he declines into heading up a local charity all those years after he declined to take up with her. Aisha's best friend Fanny has made her own way and they still refer back to Leo - we learn much about where they are and what their impulses are, subtly comparing cultural morays. satisfactory if a bit (forgive me) dull - this is well written and worthy and engrossing (nevertheless).

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