Product Description

Youthful beauty, intellectual brilliance, physical passion, tragedy and disgrace are all in this wonderful novel as told through the eyes of a 14-year-old girl. Sophie is a self-contained, exceptionally bright child who has no known parents and has spent all her life in a children's home. Her life is transformed when she wins a scholarship to Tatham's, a kind of Oxbridge university for teenagers, but this is only the start of an education as much emotional as intellectual. She falls hopelessly in love with Lucas, adored gay son of a wealthy Jewish family and, through him, is drawn into a tangle of betrayed friendship and forbidden passions that ends in tragedy and disgrace. But school is only half the story. Spanning the years 1975 to 1979 the chapters alternate between terms and holidays, between Sophie's dogged pursuit of the glittering prizes and her slow, painful discovery of who she is and where she belongs. Through other people's families, and especially other people's mothers, she learns as much about the mysterious laws of class and love as she learns from her teachers about the Latin and Greek that will prove her passport to security.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41778 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
'Utterly compelling from first to last: sad and funny and written with the matchlessly fine yet modest prose that marks him out as such a superb writer.' Stephen Fry 'Friendly Fire is an intense tale of love, life, intellectualism and passion. Inspirational.' Daily Express 'Patrick Gale is a writer who has always seemed particularly well attuned to the assorted agonies and ecstasies of childhood!The emotions still ring true.' Daily Mail 'Gale's finely tuned rites of passage novel depicts a learning curve of betrayal and shame' Metro '"Friendly Fire" is another triumph for Gale. It is part of an oeuvre which looks ever more formidable, particularly for a novelist still in mid-career.' Independent 'Every intimate bond portrayed in the novel is shaped by the broader culture, in which failure to be a "real boy" or "good girl" is punished by acts of shaming. Gale delicately shows that what shames people in this context isn't truly shameful -- just very private.' TLS 'A very enjoyable read from one of Britain's finest novelists.' Gay Times

Daily Telegraph
'...a mesmerising account of the gradual unveiling of a frighteningly complex adult world.'

Terri Apter, TLS
'Gale delicately shows that what shames people in this context isn’t truly shameful – just very private'

Customer Reviews

Awake My Soul
It's not surprising that Gale, brought up in prisons and public schools, should return from time to time to tales of institutional life. What is surprising is the freshness of perspective he manages to find in each reworking of a familiar milieu.

Themes recur as well as places: the outsider as the reference point for sanity (and often morality) and the use of a central character who is in some way freakish: Sophie, our protagonist here, has a bizarrely parent-less and yet multi-parented life and is reminiscent of Dido from A Sweet Obscurity in that though a child, she has a certain grave maturity which affects the lives of the adults around her.

These outsiders' stories may or may not carry some metaphorical representation of Gale's experiences as a gay man but what is fascinating is his ability to find the dystopic in the 'normal' and set it against the surer groundings which the freaks have managed to dredge out of their less-than-fortunate circumstances.

I've just read Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go' and there are interesting comparisons: Ishiguro's narrative is also set in a boarding school, also focuses on the interplay between apparently unusual children and the adult world around them. But Gale's story is the subtler of the two in that he does the whole job with character, rather than needing to invent a sinister parallel reality in order to provide the metaphorical underpinnings for outsider-hood.

I noted in a previous review that Gale is often compared to Joanna Trollope and Iris Murdoch. In Friendly Fire, we get a good taste of Dickens too: When Dr Harestock announces the morning hymn he 'never treated the first line as a title but read until the first full stop.' In Great Expectations, Mr. Wopsle's announcements of the psalm always involve his 'giving the whole first verse.'

Dickensian too are the wonderful illustrations by Aidan Hicks: not only are they lovely in their own right, but they can also be used by the eagle-eyed as a way of foretelling the action as each chapter begins.

You get a lot with Gale: he's clearly read everything good in English Literature and knows how to play the magpie with it. But he is never less than original even in this, his thirteenth novel. I can't think of an intelligent person I know who could fail to enjoy it and to appreciate its subtle, lingering charm.

An author who gets it right every time. Fantastic!
I'll be brief: I've been reading Gale's work since Little Bits of Baby (still in my Top Ten along with his Facts of Life).

He has completely mastered the ability to portray the complexities of human nature in a most accessible way - the landscapes of his characters' emotions and motivations are laid out before us with considerable dexterity. Similarly the various UK locations of his novels are expertly depicted.

I would suggest that he has yet to produce a poor novel - and that is why I buy them on day of publication and read them in very few sittings. How many authors can create the same sense of expectation and maintain the mix of high standards and originality?

In Friendly Fire he brings to life those strains and fears of adolescence - via youths of widely differing backgrounds and set in juxtaposed locations of public school, children's home and bourgeois suburbia. I for one felt transported back to my early to mid teens.

And, finally, if you are heading for a beach this (like his others) will hit the spot. Not because it's simplistic literature - it just reads so well.

Harry Potter for Very Grown Ups
Reading Patrick Gale is always time well spent. I am always impressed by the deep levels of understanding and knowledge that he brings to all kinds of situations. Patrick Gale knows his places and subject and doesn't let the reader down. Cornwall is nearly always used or referred to, which is good news. Friendly Fire at first does seem like a dark Harry Potter for Very Grown Ups and in it Gale has created a complete school world, including an unusual ball game that is described in detail, so there is a similarity.

Sophie, the central character, becomes our guide to this rarefied, eccentric society. Her story is tantalisingly hinted at throughout and she is a heroine who invites sympathy. Her friendships and loyalties are all well tested and each relationship brings her the experience of differing families that she needs to help her to mature.

The drawings at the beginning of each chapter are exquisite. The ending is controlled and satisfying and just barely believable!