It’s the summer of 2018. Max Anderson, in his early forties, has been living in Berlin for the past decade failing to become the filmmaker he was once tipped to be. But his wife’s career is taking off, and with a generous relocation package on offer they’ve moved with their kids back to London. Not to the Hackney flat share that he left ten years ago but, somewhat bemusedly, into a rented home on a handsome tree-lined street in north London. Pemberton Place is populated by couples who have lived there since the seventies, who bought their houses for a song, raised their families, and now sit on a relative fortune. The Boomers, as Max thinks of them, are cultured and urbane, full of shared stories and storied pasts, and immediately take Max under their wing. Both flattered and amused, Max joins most evenings as they gather to drink wine and reminisce on glories past. Max is both insider and outsider, participant and observer: a position in which he feels disconcertingly comfortable. Then eight politically mischievous Millennials move in to an empty house on the street and upend this cosy equilibrium. With the Boomers in their crosshairs they make Pemberton Place a cause celebre, the front line in the generational battle of the haves and have nots. As the Millennials steadily up the ante and the Boomers try to assert their authority, Max – the street’s sole Gen Xer – realises that everyone, eventually, has to pick a side.
