Final Demands

Carrying an unnerving combination of comedy and anguish, of wit and insight, Frederic Raphael concludes his trilogy about Cambridge graduates, which began with the best-selling Glittering Prizes, a novel just as commanding and unforgettable. Final Demands finds writer Adam Morris confronting the problems and compensations of middle age. He has a daughter in the US and her love and ambitions show how different life's prizes now are. Spending Christmas at home with his family, Adam's son and his own family come from Spain. Adam and his daughter-in-law haven't spoken much but on a boxing day drive, she reveals things that threaten to change Adam's life. Thus Raphael leads us through this social satire of his Cambridge graduates as they get older. With the advent of New Labour, the old Cambridge generation become conscious that they must hurry if they want to raise their last hurrah. The media are the new power. The Blair government have taken Adam's brother, Derek to the peak of fame and fortune, but when what seemed a bright dawn threatens to become a perpetual twilight, Adam and those around him must face their own Final Demands. Raphael's set pieces of a sun setting over a golden age make this book a compelling and fitting finale to his extraordinary trilogy.


Genre: Literary Fiction