The London Sunday Telegraph is reputed to have called A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham "witty and wise," and it is almost difficult to add a lot more about this fairly well-written, plot-driven novel about average, middle-class Brits in mid-life crises. As circumstances of their various crises draw them together, they seem to prey on each other, exascerbating their own and each other's crises further.

Real-estate problems, buying, selling, and renting, form the initial linkages, though other crises soon intervene, including adultery, school exams, fraud, indebtedness, money-laundering, thwarted ambitions, envy, loneliness and just plain boredom. The four young people, children of the adult figures, are sketched very well and their stories are perhaps the most compelling, told as they are with a view to the intensity of adolescent angst, ennui, searching and vulnerability. This novel is in no way profound or moving, nor a page-turner, though it is an interesting, enjoyable read, an accurate and insightful portrayal of the very real if ordinary, uncomfortable, awkward, and embarrassing messes most of us find ourselves in from time to time thoughout our lives.

As in real life, there are a lot of loose ends that go unexplained, and much of life's less flattering detritus is swept aside, where hopefully, as the characters plod on, it will lie out of sight, gradually to be passed over, if not forgotten. The ending is a bit like a fairy tale, though perfectly plausible and real enough, as if charity, forgiveness, atonement and repentence, practised in sincere measure, can turn back at least some of the tide.

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