I am a great fan of Patrick Gale, as is the dear friend who lent me his copy of Friendly Fire. We both loved this book and have chatted about our impressions of it often since we both read it. So this review is for him. Thank you for lending me a book you knew I would love!
Friendly Fire is narrated by Sophie a 14 year old girl who has grown up very happily in a children’s home. She is bright and obtains a place at a local boarding school, Tathams, where girls are very much in the minority. Her upbringing in institutions has been excellent preparation for this new life in a new institution. Soon Sophie becomes friends with Lucas and Charlie. Lucas is wealthy, Jewish and gay. Everything Sophie is not, and yet they strike up a friendship of such intensity that she becomes increasingly entangled in the complications of his life. Charlie joins the school after the death of his father and Lucas is given the responsibility of chaperoning and looking after him in the early days. Charlie soon throws himself into school life and so begins his complex relationship with Lucas and Sophie. A relationship which takes them all through incredible highs and lows and culminates in a shocking and unexpected tragedy.
Friendly Fire has without doubt echo’s of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Like Tartt, Gale captures the teenage years and the intensity of friendships and heightened emotion extremely well. What Gale does especially well in Friendly Fire is to capture the voice and inner feelings of a teenage girl so accurately. Her voice rings clear and true as she navigates pubity, desire and finding her place in the world.
Gale makes no secret that there are elements of this story, and particularly Tathams school, which are based upon his own privileged school years at Winchester College. I loved the descriptions of school rituals and events which I guess are known only to those who attended such schools. Sophie succumbs to all of this with ease and is rapidly drawn into a previous unknown world of academia and privilege.
“The Chapel tower was just visible from her bedroom. It seemed to stick up to one side of the cathederal and she had always assumed it was just another church, not just part of the school. As Kieren led the others through its high doors, Sophie stood in Flint Quad transfixed. House martins were swooping down from their nests under the eaves, almost brushing the four quadrants of flints that divided its paths and gave it its name. Scholars lolled on battered sofas and armchairs they had dragged out into the sunshine. Some wore the black uniform, some sports clothes or jeans. Some players cards or chess, others kicked footballs against ancient buttresses. She saw all this and felt herself claimed”
Throughout her years at Tathams, Sophie excels academically, she is gifted, hardworking and conscientious. She oscillates between Tathams and her other life during the school holidays back at the children home. With some effort she manages to fit into both and maintains a friendship and later a deeper relationship with Wilf one of the boys at the children’s home. Gale’s skill as a writer leads the reader to believe that Sophie’s life is about to take an obvious path as her relationship with Wilf intensifies. What happens however is totally unexpected as the story reaches its startling and brutal climax.
The sense of place, the character development, and the clever story telling that flows from Gales pen is a joy to read and I highly recommend this book as one to become joyfully lost in.
If you would like to know more about some of Patrick Gales other novels, see the links below to my reviews of some of his other novels.
A Place Called Winter
Gale Warning is Patrick Gales own website
