Other People's Houses
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Average rating4.3
""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"--
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Book more suited to women. A 21st century neighborhood in any city, USA, and what goes on behind closed (and sometimes not) doors. It has it all: funny, serious, secretive, sad, hopeful. The book focuses around Frances, a stay at home mom who provides the daily carpool for all the kids on the street. Through her, we meet the other neighbors and hear their own stories, including the kids. The banter between Frances and her husband is priceless and their love shines through. Everyone is dealing with their own crap and woes and Waxman has a wonderful ability to portray them so that you can't help liking all of them in spite of their failings, or maybe because of them. A new favorite for me.
What a great story! This could be the story of any neighborhood—as long as all the people who live there are as hysterical as Frances Bloom, the main character. She's the anchor mom of the story and the one with the most kids (3).
What starts as life on a carpool-sharing, typical American block that turns to into a off-balance neighborhood when one wife has an affair. It goes from an “it takes a village” way of raising kids to a secret-spilling calamity of drunk husbands, unfulfilling sex lives, and no one being who they seem.
Is it more important to be the thinnest, the most successful, or just the most tuned in? In the end, this is the story of a group of parents who foremost want to do the best by their kids, but unfortunately, they are only human. So what happens in Other People's Houses really does have an effect on the rest of the block in the most unexpected way.
I'm giving this four stars only because I'm upset that the author was able to write such a coherent book from so many points of view, often in the same paragraph or page. She breaks all the rules so successfully, it gives me hope that authors CAN write in ways are unique and still get picked up by a great publisher. Well done, but frustrating too. Wish I'd thought of it. Probably should be six stars, but there you have it.
