‘Gardam writes about love, death, loneliness, money and madness with gentle ferocity. The Old Filth trilogy should be read by anyone who has ever been interested in how we become who we are’ Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday
‘Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our very finest writers’ Hilary Mantel
‘This humorous, melancholic final volume establishes the trilogy as a modern classic’ Kate Saunders, The Times
Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth’s great rival in work and -though it was never spoken of – in love.
Veneering, Filth and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship, grace, the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age.
‘Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our very finest writers’ Hilary Mantel
‘This humorous, melancholic final volume establishes the trilogy as a modern classic’ Kate Saunders, The Times
Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth’s great rival in work and -though it was never spoken of – in love.
Veneering, Filth and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship, grace, the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age.
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Reviews
She is a brilliant writer. Her prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor. She keeps us entertained, and she keeps us guessing. Be thankful for her books. Be thankful for this trilogy, which is ultimately an elegy, created with deep affection
Exuberant and funny and dizzy and a little bit frightening... an ambitious and complex portrait of extraordinary times
Last Friends is evocative, elegiac, and shaded in autumnal tones, as suits the final volume in a trilogy. Like Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, the Old Filth trilogy restores us to an era rich in spectacle and bristling with insinuation and intrigue. Vivid, spacious, superbly witty, and refreshingly brisk...the story (and the author) will endure
[Gardam] is the best kind of literary escape: serious, mesmerizing, and deeply satisfying
Her effortless command of character and narrative sweeps you right along...Among other things, she provides an unsentimental but oddly hopeful vision of old age
If Rudyard Kipling was the laureate of the British Empire, then Jane Gardam is surely the closest thing we have to a laureate of its demise . . . Spanning nearly a century, the three novels offer a compelling, finely nuanced tableau of the end of an era and the passing of the generation that sustained it... a perfectly balanced ending to the trilogy that is Jane Gardam's masterpiece
If Rudyard Kipling was the laureate of the British Empire, then Jane Gardam is surely the closest thing we have to a laureate of its demise...Spanning nearly a century, the three novels offer a compelling, finely nuanced tableau of the end of an era and the passing of the generation that sustained it. Part of the genius of each successive book is that it does not continue the story so much as rework it from a different angle.
An ambitious and complex portrait of extraordinary times
The satisfying conclusion to Gardam's Old Filth trilogy offers exquisite prose, wry humor, and keen insights into aging and death
This is as mordantly precise and moving a novel as you will find anywhere
Gardam's style is witty and graceful, at times reminiscent of Muriel Spark
A consummate storyteller, she writes of life with wonderful gusto and wry humour
There is more humour, pathos and compassion crammed into this slim volume than many a book twice its length
It's hard...not to be charmed by a writer with Gardam's substantial gifts
As funny as as surreptitiously moving a novel as you'll find... her observations and sentences stalk you, making you chuckle in unexpected situations long after putting the book aside
Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our very finest writers
Cinematic... the work of a maestro
Her effortless command of character and narrative sweeps you right along...Among other things, she provides an unsentimental but oddly hopeful vision of old age
Gardam's writing is beautiful - cool clear and wickedly funny
Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our very finest writers
The satisfying conclusion to Gardam's Old Filth trilogy offers exquisite prose, wry humor, and keen insights into aging and death
All three Gardam books are beautifully written but its a pleasure to note that Last Friends is the most enjoyable, the funniest and the most touching... Like [Robertson] Davies, she fills the pages of her trilogy with surprises that make the reader hurry forward
Gardam writes about love, death, loneliness, money and madness with such gentle ferocity that she is often compared to Jane Austen, though a closer analogy is with Samuel Beckett. The Old Filth trilogy should be read by anyone who has ever been interested in how we become who we are
Her prose is so perceptive and fluid that it feels mentally healthful, exiling the noise and clutter of your mind as efficiently as a Schubert sonata
She is a brilliant writer. Her prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor. She keeps us entertained, and she keeps us guessing. Be thankful for her books. Be thankful for this trilogy, which is ultimately an elegy, created with deep affection
[Gardam] is the best kind of literary escape: serious, mesmerizing, and deeply satisfying
Last Friends is evocative, elegiac, and shaded in autumnal tones, as suits the final volume in a trilogy. Like Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, the Old Filth trilogy restores us to an era rich in spectacle and bristling with insinuation and intrigue. Vivid, spacious, superbly witty, and refreshingly brisk . . . the story (and the author) will endure