Product Description

Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter's partner, Elroy, a black social-worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. The scene is set for violence, and Alfred's wife May is forced to choose between justice and kinship. This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87435 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 345 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Conforming to Philip Larkin's famously acidic sentiments about parenting, Maggie Gee's The White Family offers a bleak, but piercingly honest, portrait of an "ordinary" British family. The novel's patriarch, Alfred White, is a curmudgeonly London park keeper who has presided over both the park and his home-life for 40 years. A fan of "the good old days", his misty-eyed sentimentality is augmented with a racism of the unthinking kind. When he's struck down with a stroke his family are forced to come to terms with a life without him. For his gentle, bookish if submissive wife, May, loneliness is the greatest fear. However, Alfred's brand of fathering has left more painful legacies for their three children. Firstborn Darren, the golden child and now a successful journalist in America, still bitterly resents his father's beatings. Daughter Shirley, whose relationships with black men led to violent conflicts with Alfred, is more forgiving but no less damaged. The youngest child Dirk has absorbed his father's worst opinions and become a shaven-headed, misogynistic fascist.

Like Graham Swift's Last Orders, Gee makes judicious use of a multi-voiced narrative. This inventive structure provides a disturbingly intimate understanding of the emotions and prejudices of the Whites, while contributions from subsidiary figures such as Darren's childhood friend, the failed novelist Thomas Lovell, help to extend the vista beyond the immediate family. With the possible exception of Dirk, whose suppressed homosexuality is overblown, her characters are richly drawn; imbued with truly human strengths and failings. Dirk's venomous racist rants, which later spill into violence, are deeply shocking, but Gee's real achievement is to examine the more subtle and insidious forms of racism (and of homophobia) in British society today. --Travis Elborough

Review
'Outstanding ... tender, sexy and alarming.' Jim Crace'One of the year's finest novels.' Literary Review'Compulsively readable.' The Guardian'Astonishing ... beautifully written.' Big Issue'A transcendent work.' Daily Telegraph'Intensely touching.' Financial Times

About the Author
Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original 'Best Young British Novelists'. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including My Cleaner and The Flood, which was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize. She is the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Searingly Beautiful Writing
I really wish I had read The White Family before I read The Flood, as the experience of coming to the White Family armed with fore knowledge of the terrible thing the youngest son would do made it very painful in the reading. Still - it is an unmissable book.

Gee is a fabulous stylist, juggling a narrative imparted by not 1 not 2 but 6 different voices with skill and panache. The changes between the different members of the fated White family and its circle never falter, never stumble. Each is perfect, convincing and awesomely touching.

The White Family is not, however, a cheery book - it is full of many colours of pain - but it is profound and moving. It is a book beset by the sadness at the heart of our society and lives, where relationships are splintered by bigotry, history, prejudice and fear. On the surface it is deep enough as a study of the roots of racism and racial hatred, but it goes even deeper into the fragmentation of our very souls.

The White Family is a lyrical work. A family tragedy of Shakespearean scale. Read it when you are feeling strong and secure. But read it BEFORE The Flood.

A view of modern society.
"The White Family" is a clever comment on today's society. Touching on issues from racism and homosexuality to child abuse and adoption. It follows the White family after the old fashioned Alfred is taken ill. What follows is the gradual opening of a terrible can of worms, concearning every member of the family (Alfred's submissive wife May, his famous son Darren, his daughter Shirley and facist son Dirk)and those people that surround them; Thomas Lovell a friend of the family and Shirley's partner Elroy. How they are all following the same path and heading towards a violent act that will change everything for all of them forever.

Each chapter is written from a different character's perspective. Whilst this enables the reader to form their own opinions of the characters rather than following the bias of a single narrator. This episodic structure sometimes makes the book a less compelling read, as you can put it down and pick it up again without losing any momentum.

The book shows how appearences can be decieving, from an outsider's point of view the White family is faultless. Underneath the cover however is a family living in fear of it's abusive, racist patriarch. It also demonstrates the connections we have with people and how our actions effect a far greater circle than we can possible concieve.

The book may not be for all tastes, as some of the narration is severe and shocking. However, if you are willing to persevere then there is a lot to learn from this novel. It is far fetched at points, a little too coincidental but this is easily overlooked as Maggie Gee's novel is a lot like a soap. A lot of issues and problems affecting the one family...yet somehow is acceptable as without this it would lose the message it is putting across. In modern society what is acceptable?

The White Family by Maggie Gee
The five star rating of this novel lies in its simple story-line and brilliantly portrayed unfolding characters. Each indivually revealed layer by layer.
Alfred White, the hospitalised dying Park Keeper father lies at the centre of the story with daily family visits to his bedside triggering the portrayal of actions, feelings, and happenings of each character.
Apart from portraying their surfaces, the author delves deeper into their pasts to account for the present. From May his dedicated wife, to his daughter sexy Shirley, and Dirk his youngest murderous son. Plus family racial tension.
Each intermittent short insight into the family members leaves the reader wanting more. They are not disappointed.
The story past and present unfolds as Alfred proceeds towards his dramatic demise.
The "No Ending" last chapter entrances well beyond the end. Over four hundred pages. A fine novel. A writing gem.