We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Common Ground

ebook / ISBN-13: 9781444760743

Price: £8.99

Select a format:

Paperback

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Ashley, a disaffected geography teacher and Jay, a printer in a local arts project, are about to start a family, though both have mixed feelings about becoming parents, especially when their house is crumbling around them and their neighbourhood seems increasingly anarchic. As Jay becomes deeply involved in the fight to save the ancient woodland of Hogslea Common from a planned motorway, Ashley corresponds with his carefree brother, who is backpacking round the world. With the gap between the couple widening as steadily as the cracks in their walls, Ashley has to choose between his parents’ values and abandoning a society he finds increasingly precarious and menacing.

By the author of the award-winning PIG, this is a sharply observed, often funny and thought-provoking tale of modern life and of the choices we all have to make – as parents, children and members of society.
 

What's Inside

Read More Read Less

Reviews

Cowan has the rare ability to write an ambitious novel in a tone which is both intimate and engaging . . . He creates a fictional world at once bleak and tender, a beautifully exact portrait of a 1900s inner city
<i>The Times</i>
Cowan's observation is superb
<i>TLS</i>
[He writes with] freshness and authenticity . . . Cowan understands the real pain of life's moments of pathos
<i>New Statesman</i>
A fine and acutely perceived novel
<i>Independent</i>