Additional information
by Jane Gardam (Author)
"Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning."
The Seattle Times
Jane Gardam's highly praised trilogy that began with Old Filth, continued with The Man in the Wooden Hat, and concludes with this book tells the story of a decades-long marriage stretching from the immediate post-World War II period to the early years of the twenty-first century. Old Filth was the story of Sir Edward Feathers-so clever, so triumphantly his own man, so wounded by his dreadful childhood. The Man in the Wooden Hat was his wife Betty's story, in which the difference between marriage and romance is weighed with great subtly and understanding. In Last Friends it is Terence Veneering's turn. Filth's hated rival in court, Veneering has escaped both his unconventional upbringing and the war and later emerges in the Far East as a brilliant, handsome man of panache and fame. Last Friends is an unforgettable novel that brings a magnificent trilogy to an end with the deep satisfaction that only great literature provides.
"I don't know why Gardam isn't universally celebrated and beloved. Her prose is dazzling, and she writes with a kind
of subdued but wicked humor." Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
Author Biography
Jane Gardam is the only writer to have been twice awarded the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year. She is winner of the David Higham Prize, the Royal Society for Literature's Winifred Holtby Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and the Silver Pen Award from PEN. Her novels include: God on the Rocks, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Old Filth, a finalist for the Orange Prize; The Man in the Wooden Hat, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book prize, and Last Friends, finalist for the Folio Award. She lives in the south of England, near the sea.
