The Dice Was Loaded from the Start

by David Annand

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 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.

With wit and a propulsive pace, David Annand spins the battleground of the housing crisis into a brilliantly crafted study in intergenerational difference. The Dice Was Loaded from the Start what does the good life look like? And how might we make meaning in an exhausted world?

279 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2026