Alistair's Reviews > Other People's Houses

Frances Bloom is the fulcrum of her neighbourhood block. As designated car pool driver she not only drives her three kids to their various educational establishments, she also carries her nephew, friends Bill and Julie's son and Charlie and Anne's kids to theirs.
Funny, self-deprecating and receptive, Frances is in the (literal) driver's seat to know about the lives of her friends and neighbours. Yet nothing quite prepares her for the sight of Anne and a handsome, younger man having sex on the floor when she returns to retrieve the forgotten toilet rolls for Anne's daughter, Kate. As Anne and Charlie's marriage implodes, Waxman employs humour and pathos to unpeel the layers of other couples on the block. Lucas lives with his father, Bill, but where did Bill's wife Julie go? Frances' cousin Iris and her wife Sara have a son, Wyatt; Iris wants another baby, but will it wreck her marriage? And Frances and Michael? Whilst happy, they start to question their own marriage. Much of the humour and funny situations arise from the antics of the kids, from the temperamental teenager Ava to Lally, an independently minded four-year-old. Waxman's second novel, after the delightful The Garden of Small Beginnings, is a lot more robust both in scope and language.