The Party
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3.9 • 170 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
‘As the train pressed on, I realised that my life was in the process of taking a different direction, plotted according to a new constellation. Because, although I didn't know it yet, I was about to meet Ben and nothing would ever be the same again.’
Martin Gilmour is an outsider. When he wins a scholarship to Burtonbury School, he doesn’t wear the right clothes or speak with the right kind of accent. But then he meets the dazzling, popular and wealthy Ben Fitzmaurice, and gains admission to an exclusive world. Soon Martin is enjoying tennis parties and Easter egg hunts at the Fitzmaurice family’s estate, as Ben becomes the brother he never had.
But Martin has a secret. He knows something about Ben, something he will never tell. It is a secret that will bind the two of them together for the best part of 25 years.
At Ben’s 40th birthday party, the great and the good of British society are gathering to celebrate in a haze of champagne, drugs and glamour. Amid the hundreds of guests – the politicians, the celebrities, the old-money and newly rich – Martin once again feels that disturbing pang of not-quite belonging. His wife, Lucy, has her reservations too. There is disquiet in the air. But Ben wouldn’t do anything to damage their friendship.
Would he?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Herman Koch's The Dinner will be tempted to check out Day's fourth novel both follow two couples with simmering emotional histories as they spend an upscale evening together, during which old resentments are revealed and something tragic occurs but in this novel, the plot plays out predictably and is beset by obvious foreshadowing. Ben Fitzmaurice and Martin Gilmour, Londoners on the cusp of middle age, have been best friends since they met at public school in 1989, despite the fact that the former comes from a wealthy, titled background and the latter a hand-me-down existence. Ben and his beautiful wife, Serena, hold a party to celebrate their new home, Tipworth Priory, a former monastery. Martin and his more modest partner, Lucy, are invited. Now a successful art critic, Martin has never gotten over the meanness of his youth and rubs shoulders uneasily at the party with Ben's posh guests, including the new prime minister. At the end of the evening, Ben and Serena ask to speak to Martin and Lucy in private, and that's when things get out of hand. Ultimately, this is a hollow diatribe against the rich and entitled.
Customer Reviews
It was fine
Kept waiting for the big reveal. Then it was the end and I felt like it never came. Characters developed well (if slowly) but then I felt it all fell flat because you kinda knew the conclusion beforehand