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Jane Gardam
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Book
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Publisher | Abacus | ||
ISBN | 9780349118451 | ||
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Reviewer
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Janice
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Synopsis
It is a wet day in Dorset, and walking to a luncheon party is Sir Edward Feathers QC, followed by two elderly friends: his scruffy neighbour and sparring partner, Veneering, and Fiscal-Smith, the meanest lawyer ever to make a fortune at the Bar. Fans of Jane Gardam's bestselling novel, OLD FILTH, will be delighted to encounter Filth, now almost ninety, making his immaculate way to Privilege Hill, named perhaps for the Prive-Lieges who arrived with the Normans, but more probably for the village privies. Ranging from a Victorian mansion converted into a home for unmarried mothers to a wartime hospital in the middle of the Blitz, from ghost stories to brilliant observations of love and loneliness in their various manifestations - including, in 'Pangbourne', a woman who falls in love with a gorilla - to reflections on the haphazard nature of intellect and memories in 'The Last Reunion', the stories in this collection mix Jane Gardam's trademark sardonic wit with a delicate tenderness and a touch of the surreal.
Review
Jane Gardam's has followed up her previous novel 'Old Filth' with a delightful encounter with Filth again in this new collection of short stories, about 'The People who lived on Privilege Hill'. I have not read the first book, but found this book amusing about what 'Filth' an ex-lawyer - Nick, named this by his colleagues, when he still practised - and the people at Privilege Hill got up to.
There are fourteen short stories that are all intertwined in some way or the other. There are flights of fancy, some crazy jokes and also some very telling moments. But Jane's way of telling stories is fast and furious that kept me glued to the book, and you can see the people she talks about on many a street in many a town or city.
The book has humour and alternates that with the unusual; Like the story of 'Pangbourne' where a woman is besotted by the large gorilla in the local zoo, and spends all her days just watching what he does.
Jane Gardam's book has a real human feeling about people and places and I would love to see more stories of Filth and his old colleagues.
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