Overview

"Over a period of eighteen months Tony Parker interviewed the residents of an ordinary housing estate in South London. He listened to an assorted mixture of personalities - including a vagrant, two policemen, an often-convicted fence who was the mother of five children, a pro-flogging magistrate, a local doctor, and a 75-year-old widower who spent ""an hour or two in bed each week with one or other of about twelve different ladies I meet at our church"". The inhabitants of ""Providence"" opened their hearts, revealing all their quirks, emotions and prejudices. These interviews prove that extraordinary stories are found not only in deserts and jungles: even amid the bleak sprawl of South London, Tony Parker discovered a community that is diverse and enthralling."

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9780907871576

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This fascinating account of life on a South London housing estate was first published in 1983; it still fuels the perennial argument over public housing. The early 1980s saw the beginning of the end of the Utopian dream; these were the years when the vast 60s- and 70s-built council estates started to crumble and seem even less inviting than the slums they had replaced. Like Parker's other books, The People of Providence allows the residents of this necessarily anonymous estate to tell their life stories in their own words; the anonymity - coupled with Parker's gift for putting people at their ease - means they speak with shocking honesty. We meet the upstanding, the feckless, happily married couples, single mothers and fathers, and those whose veneer of respectability conceals unpalatable truths. So real and immediate is this book that I read it in one (very long) sitting - it is compelling to a degree rare in nonfiction. (Kirkus UK)

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