Common Decency

It may be quiet in the suburbs, but it's far from peaceful . . . Oak Drive can be found nestled tidily in an unassuming English town. Its uniform front gardens overlook a midsized common which the street's residents survey with quiet, some might say smug, pride. This is the sort of place where it pays to sweat the small stuff, and let the big things look after themselves. Bins should be placed back in their right positions in a timely fashion and paintwork should share the same tasteful but muted palette. Sometimes, however, the big things do not look after themselves - and all hell can break loose in sleepy suburbia. Common Decency chronicles the lives and interactions of the street's residents as they band together to save a beloved oak tree from destruction at the hands of ruthless developers. As tensions rise and repressed neuroses and resentments seep out, the secrets of Oak Drive threaten to shatter the well-ordered veneer, revealing some rather more unsettling truths. . . Tom Allen brings his trademark dark comedy to the page in this brilliant novel about what it truly means to be a neighbourhood.