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Friendly Fire
by: Patrick Gale

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780007151042
ISBN: 0007151047
Label: HarperPerennial
Manufacturer: HarperPerennial
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: May 02, 2006
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Studio: HarperPerennial
Sales Rank: 6530

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- great book- still missing alittle something
I would definately say that this book is a great read. It is about a young yet very articulate orphan named Sophie. By reading this book we get to see what the changes and ups and downs of a teenage girl's life as we watch her grow up throughout the novel. This novel is a great read because it captures the the deeper true feelings and emotions that a real girl would go through. This book is an eye opener as it deals with characters that what we in society would label as 'outcasts', but instead it gives us an insight into their world and it really widens and gives us different perspectives on life situations that we may have not have even seen before. I have to admit this book has some very deep themes at times and can prove to be alittle too ... Read More:

Rating:

- Truth Can Be Found In Fantasy
This book is in many ways an accurate portrayal of growing up in a British public school. However, at times it reads like a bored child daydreaming in class. There's nothing wrong with this, and in this world of an imagination running wild we can see real emotion, real drama, basically real life. It is one of the few books that provokes true empathy, and is timeless in its message.

Rating:

- more 'Mallory Towers' than 'Another Country'
There's nothing particularly wrong with Friendly Fire, it feels effortlessly written, but that's just the problem, it's rather too twee, safe and lacking what PG's fans have come to love about him, his acerbic wit and brittle observation.

He's writing about a bunch of misfits at boarding school during the 70's but life here is more 'Mallory Towers' than 'Another Country' or 'If'. The main problem is the protagonist Sophie, through who the story is told. Perhaps she should be called 'Patrick', because this reader never fully believes that the perspective is that of a 13-year-old girl who's grown up in a care home (the language/observation is that of a 40-year-old gay man - sorry!). Would a 13-year-old really uses terms like 'Tudorbethan' ... Read More:

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More:

Rating:

- Well-constructed and sympathetic novel
Lots of interesting detail about Winchester College. Hard to believe that Sophie would have been so unrebellious, that punk could have so little impact on these kids, that a low-class girl like Sophie could be so at ease with all the members of the upper classes that she comes into contact with.

The characters, Charlie, Lucas and Mr Compton are drawn much more convincingly than the straight ones - Sophie, Wilf and Margaret.

Overall an enjoyable read but not the definitive seventies school novel.

Books : Friendly Fire