She crossed an ocean to claim her inheritance. She never expected someone to already be living in it. When Sandra leaves Boston for the granite hills of Cornwall, she carries the deeds to a cottage she has never seen — a bequest from the grandfather she never met. What she finds behind the blue wooden door of Lamella is not an empty house, but Harry: a white-bearded, whisky-sipping former factory mechanic who speaks of miracles, aliens, and love, and who has quietly made her grandfather's home his own. Getting rid of him should be simple. It is anything but. Drawn deeper into the misty, gossip-soaked town of Hillstone, Sandra falls in with an unforgettable cast of drifters and dreamers — an ash-branch-wielding old hippie, a gold-hunting widower, a self-styled grand lady who stores her Christmas decorations in the mortuary, and a spiritual guru whose charm masks something far more calculating. As Harry's grip on the cottage tightens and a bitter legal battle looms, Sandra must decide how much truth she can afford to tell, and how much of herself she is willing to lose. By turns hilarious, poignant, and quietly devastating, Lazy Friends is a sharply observed novel about eccentricity, self-deception, and the strange communities we stumble into when we are running from grief. Ana Ingham renders the fading, salt-worn charm of Cornwall and its unforgettable inhabitants with wit, compassion, and an unflinching eye for human folly. For readers of literary fiction who love vivid characters, dark comedy, and stories where nothing — and no one — is quite what they seem.
