The friendly ones / Philip Hensher.
Publication details: London : 4th Estate, 2018.Description: 579 pages ; 21 cmISBN:- 9780008175641 (hardback)
- 2000-2099
- Families -- Fiction
- Domestic fiction
- Domestic fiction
- English fiction
- Families
- English fiction -- England -- 21st century
- Immigrant families -- England -- Fiction
- Secrecy -- Fiction
- Neighbors -- Fiction
- Families -- England -- Fiction
- Immigrant families -- England -- Fiction
- England
- Sheffield (England) -- Fiction
- Bangladesh -- Social conditions -- Fiction
- 823/.914 23
- PR6058.E554 F75 2018
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Fiction | HEN | Available | 068058 |
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. The secret wound that overshadows the Spinsters 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?