Jane Gardam's Old Filth introduced readers to the formidable barrister Sir Edward Feathers, along with his wife, Betty, and his archrival Terry Veneering. The Man in the Wooden Hat revealed Betty's internal life to be far more complicated than her placid facade in the earlier novel indicated, and now this enigmatic trio's relationships reach a complex coda in Last Friends--a novel that is slimmer than its predecessors and also more dependent on a prior knowledge of those books. Gardam explores in all three books the ways in which stereotypical English respectability can function as a smokescreen of deception.
The story begins with Veneering's funeral, with Feathers's following shortly, but even after death, the lives of these three characters remain a mystery to those around them. In Veneering's case, only the dour and eccentric Fiscal-Smith knows the truth--he knew Veneering as Venetski, the child of a Russian immigrant rumored to be a spy.
Last Friends is about the limits of intimacy, with Gardam subtly insisting that everyone is alone even when they are together. Consequently, no one knows the whole truth about anyone, least of all those closest to them. Gardam's dialogue is disjointed in a way that is keenly realistic--often, her characters hear only themselves. Yet hope still remains for some bridging of the distance, even between deadly rivals--and very old friends in the last phase of life. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post