The Whites are an ordinary British family: love, hatred, sex and death hold them together, and tear them apart. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Alfred White, a London park keeper, still rules his home with fierce conviction and inarticulate tenderness. May, his clever, passive wife, loves Alfred but conspires against him. Their three children are no longer close; the successful elder son, Darren, has escaped to the USA. But when Alfred collapses on duty, beautiful, childless Shirley, who lives with Leroy, 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. In the end Alfred and May are forced to make a climactic decision: does justice matter more than kinship? This ambitious, ground-breaking novel takes on the taboo subject of racial hatred as it looks for the roots of violence within the family and within British society.
Author Biography
Maggie Gee has published seven novels, including The Burning Book, Grace and Lost Children. She read English at Oxford and has three degrees in literature including a doctorate in the twentieth-century novel. She also writes for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, TLS and the New Statesman, and is a Fellow and Council Member of the Royal Society of Literature.
