The Northern Clemency (Hardcover)

Sunday Times said about this book that it is “Brilliantly styled . . . Hensher is fascinatingly good on how social transformation manifests itself in the textures, colours and manners of a culture . . . The Northern Clemency is not only extremely funny, but also deeply humane. [It] is a virtuoso display of sympathy: Hensher seems to dwell as easily and evocatively in the mind-world of a 10-year-old schoolboy as in that of a 59-year-old stroke victim or a middle-aged estate agent.”

Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency begins at the perimeter of a late-summer party, amidst a din of neighbors gossiping one moment and navigating awkward silences the next. But once you encounter the Glover family–in particular, their languidly handsome teenage son Daniel–there’s no turning back. Hensher’s style (which earned him a spot on the Man Booker Prize shortlist) is among the many qualities that made this novel Amazon BestSeller. The language is so beautiful and brutally honest that you’ll find it hard not to underline your favourite passages, particularly those about the city of Sheffield, whose families witness "the last phase of its industrial greatness" in 1974 and begin to experience the intensifying class wars that ensue. The Northern Clemencybrings out the universal secret we all keep inside us: the family makes no sense, and yet makes all the sense in the world.