CLOSE TO HOME, Deborah Moggach's second novel, is the story of one hot summer, of passion and dislocation, and of lives converging in unexpected ways.

Kate Cooper has been married to James for six years, and is trying very hard to be the model wife while he enjoys his high-flying career, but there's always something she feels she doesn't get quite right, whether it's her inability to remove their toddler son's pencil squiggles from the freshly painted walls, to the grubby button holes on her new blouse.

Then she meets aspiring novelist Sam, her next door neighbour, a man who shouldn't, but does, have time on his hands. And he makes her laugh. But what about his wife, and their daughter Marion, dreaming her way through adolescence?


'Moggach is so good at describing the ordinary' Spectator