Other People's Houses
Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman
Paperback, 352 pages
Published April 3rd 2018 by Berkley Books
"Abbi Waxman is both irreverent and thoughtful."--#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin
And now the author of The Garden of Small Beginnings returns with a hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything.
At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband...
*record scratch*
As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this...
After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families--and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First line—"It's amazing how many children you could fit in a minivan, if you tessellated carefully and maintained only the most basic level of safety."
Other People's Houses gives us a look at a neighborhood where people sort of know each other and sort of know what is going on in those other people's lives. But as we get a glimpse of the insides of those other people's houses, we see that things are not what they seem to be or what we thought they were.
The story is mainly about the people who live in four houses, the adults as well as all of the children. At first, it seemed like a lot of characters to keep straight, but I quickly got to know them and I soon felt like I was just another neighbor on that street, finding out their secrets and lies.
This was a fascinating, sometimes hilarious, look at friends and acquaintances and what is perceived to be going on within the four walls of their houses. And how far can friends go before that friendship breaks? I thoroughly enjoyed Other People's Houses and would recommend it to those who like taking a look at the complexity of relationships or just want a fun book to get lost in.
I received an ARC of this book and am voluntarily reviewing it.
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About the Author
Abbi Waxman was born in England in 1970, the oldest child of two copywriters who never should have been together in the first place. Once her father ran off to buy cigarettes and never came back, her mother began a highly successful career writing crime fiction. She encouraged Abbi and her sister Emily to read anything and everything they could pull down from the shelves, and they did. Naturally lazy and disinclined to dress up, Abbi went into advertising, working as a copywriter and then a creative director at various advertising agencies in London and New York. Clients ranged from big and traditional, (AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, IBM, American Express, Unilever, Mercedes-Benz) to big and morally corrupt (R. J. Reynolds) to big and larcenous (Enron). Eventually she quit advertising, had three kids and started writing books, TV shows and screenplays, largely in order to get a moment’s peace.
Abbi lives in Los Angeles with her husband, three kids, three dogs, three cats, a gecko, two mice and six chickens. Every one of these additions made sense at the time, it’s only in retrospect that it seems foolhardy.
Feel free to drop her a line, she readily welcomes any excuse to stop working and do something else.
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Sounds good and a few readers I respect have liked this one too. Must see if I can get it from my local library.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first Waxman book, and I really enjoyed it. I adored Frances and thought Waxman did a fantastic job weaving these people's lives together.
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