What if there was a run on the bank of mum and dad?
It's 2018. Once tipped-for-greatness but now frustrated film-maker Max Anderson is forty-two years old and just back in London after a decade in Berlin. His wife Karolina has landed a new job developing environmental strategy for a major American bank, and her outrageous relocation package allows the couple and their two kids to move into a house on Pemberton Place, a once-shabby but now supremely desirable street in Hampstead.
Pemberton Place is almost exclusively inhabited by a group of Baby Boomers, many of whom have lived there since its dog days in the 70s and 80s. With Karolina tied up in endless Zoom calls that run late into the night, Max spends more and more time with his new neighbours, particularly the street's alpha couple: Bryony, an artist, and Jonathan, an investor. Flirting with her, locking horns with him.
But Pemberton Place's cosy equilibrium is upended when, unannounced, eight politically mischievous Millennials occupy an empty house on the street. Led by the earnest, ambitious Zoe, the new arrivals intend to shake things up. They have the Boomers in their sights, and the two generations quickly find themselves at loggerheads, with the sole Gen-X'er Max cast as go-between. As the Millennials steadily up the ante and the Boomers try to assert their authority, the clash builds to its climax in a carefully planned robbery - and Max discovers that we all have to pick a side eventually.
With wit, vivid dialogue, and a propulsive pace, David Annand spins the battleground of the housing crisis into a brilliantly crafted study in intergenerational difference. The Dice Was Loaded from the Start asks: what does the good life look like? And how might we make meaning in an exhausted world?
Genre: General Fiction
It's 2018. Once tipped-for-greatness but now frustrated film-maker Max Anderson is forty-two years old and just back in London after a decade in Berlin. His wife Karolina has landed a new job developing environmental strategy for a major American bank, and her outrageous relocation package allows the couple and their two kids to move into a house on Pemberton Place, a once-shabby but now supremely desirable street in Hampstead.
Pemberton Place is almost exclusively inhabited by a group of Baby Boomers, many of whom have lived there since its dog days in the 70s and 80s. With Karolina tied up in endless Zoom calls that run late into the night, Max spends more and more time with his new neighbours, particularly the street's alpha couple: Bryony, an artist, and Jonathan, an investor. Flirting with her, locking horns with him.
But Pemberton Place's cosy equilibrium is upended when, unannounced, eight politically mischievous Millennials occupy an empty house on the street. Led by the earnest, ambitious Zoe, the new arrivals intend to shake things up. They have the Boomers in their sights, and the two generations quickly find themselves at loggerheads, with the sole Gen-X'er Max cast as go-between. As the Millennials steadily up the ante and the Boomers try to assert their authority, the clash builds to its climax in a carefully planned robbery - and Max discovers that we all have to pick a side eventually.
With wit, vivid dialogue, and a propulsive pace, David Annand spins the battleground of the housing crisis into a brilliantly crafted study in intergenerational difference. The Dice Was Loaded from the Start asks: what does the good life look like? And how might we make meaning in an exhausted world?
Genre: General Fiction
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Used availability for David Annand's The Dice Was Loaded From the Start