The Friendly Ones

Philip Hensher Fourth Estate €13.65

At a barbecue in Sheffield, a near-fatal accident brings two neighbouring families – one English, the other migrants from the subcontinent – closer together. Twenty-five years later, a 100th birthday party brings down the curtain on an extraordinary human odyssey, in which forgiveness and redemption play a central role. Hensher’s 11th novel is his biggest and most ambitious yet: oldfashioned in its storytelling, with sly nods to The Winter’s Tale, but shot through with tenderness and peopled with a rich cast of characters, from druggies and dropouts to doctors and politicians.