Stanley Middleton

"The comforts and terrors of middle-class provincial life have seldom been more sharply dissected than by Stanley Middleton, and his new novel adds to this social insight a new poignancy. As ageing slowly entwines John Stone, retired headmaster at Beechnall, his wife Peg and their various friends and relatives, and as past certainties recede, the solid, decent world of provincial life with its satisfactions and occasional minor adulteries gives way to new threats - some external, in the changing society around them, some internal. The question of how to live the good life, always near the centre of Middleton's novels, confronts the inhabitants of this quiet street of Victorian villas and is answered in surprising and disturbing ways."--BOOK JACKET.

Sam Martin feels himself to be lucky. He lives in rich retirement and in good health despite his old age, busying himself with painting, walking and with the affairs of others he observes from his Norfolk bungalow. Formerly a successful international businessman, he has had to adjust to a smaller and apparently more restricted world - but one with its own dramas operating on a human scale, which is the largest scale of all. From his vantage point of age and seeming detachment, Sam is soon drawn into the local community and becomes involved in a variety of events and relationships: a little girl lost on the beach, whose rescue introduces him to Karen Craig and opens up a difficult contemporary marriage; the redoubtable wife of the local retired admiral, whose life receives a stunning blow when they are robbed; the histronic Jack Brentnall, always the centre of attention in the local pub; and Alice Jeffreys, whose role is yet to be revealed. In Necessary Ends, Stanley Middleton explores the realities of old age in a manner inclusive of many of the human values usually excluded from it in contemporary fiction. It is a work of both opportunity and reconciliation.

Frank Stapleton is retired and worried about his son Stuart and wife Francesca who outwardly seem alright but are on the verge of breaking up. The author's observations are interesting because he observes and reflects people so accurately.

A chance meeting, succour for an elderly man in the street, and Anthony Clark is immediately thrust into a complicated set of relationships which will transform his life.

The day in the life of John Bainbridge starts with the funeral of an acquaintance followed by chance meeting with a former mistress.