A Desirable Residence Book

Another terrible madeleine wickham book. i don't know if i even have the energy to go into it. but i'll try.

so, liz is married to jonathan. they own a home in silchester. liz convinces jonathan to put the home on the market in the hopes of using the proceeds to pay down the mortgage on the "tutorial college" they just purchased. it took me forever to figure out what a tutorial college is. i guess it's like an american SAT prep company, sort of. liz & jonathan have a disaffected teenage daughter named alice. alice is sad about her parents selling the house, so she spends a lot of time sneaking into the garage of her old house to chain-smoke.

marcus whitherstone is one of the owners of the realty company liz & jonathan are using to sell their house. he is married to some uptight supermom whose name i forget. they have two sons. the older one is about to sit the scholarship exams for a prestigious high school. supermom enrolls him in extra class at the tutorial school to help him prepare. marcus happens to be in the office one day when liz has to take a meeting regarding the fact that the silchester house hasn't sold yet. he offers to pull some strings at the bank so she can carry two mortgages, & also find her a tenant.

the tenants he finds are ginny, a PR agent who does a lot of work for the realty company, & her husband piers. piers is an actor who has fallen on hard times, but he has an audition for a popular soap opera coming up. both he & ginny are hopeful that he'll get it.

while marcus & liz are waiting for ginny & piers to come see the house, they end up kissing, & it soon blossoms into a full-fledged affair. liz is over the moon about it. marcus takes her to posh hotels & lets her raid the mini-bar & buys her expensive jewelry. she begins to fantasize about him declaring his love for her & asking her to run away & get married. she mostly seems excited about marcus solving all her money problems for her. she daydreams about being his wife, going to fancy parties, & wearing designer clothes. she seems totally oblivious to the fact that marcus is quickly running out of patience with her & isn't that interested in continuing the affair.

marcus is also distracted by how he did some appraisal work on a fancy estate for a big-time banker named leo. leo asked marcus to under-value to estate so that leo could flip it & make a huge profit. marcus does as asked & is paid handsomely for it, but then people start asking questions & he kind of freaks.

alice makes the acquaintance of piers & ginny after they move into the rental home & they kind of take her under their wings, even though she's just 14 years old. alice has a little crush on piers, which everyone seems to find cute. alice goes over to hang out with them pretty much every single day.

blah blah. this all goes on for like 200 pages. finally ginny & piers decide to have a big party to celebrate...something. i don't know what. they invite alice & her parents, as well as marcus & his family (they rent from one couple & ginny works for marcus, remember). liz is thrilled to see marcus again. she thinks the party might be the setting for the marriage proposal she's been dreaming about. marcus pulls liz into the garage to break things off & liz makes an ass of herself. & it turns out that alice is in there smoking (marcus & liz didn't see her). so now she knows that her mom has been having an affair & she kind of freaks. meanwhile, piers just got the call about the soap opera gig. he was rejected. he & ginny are crying hysterically in their bedroom while everyone else parties. when alice tries to tell ginny about liz's affair, ginny screams at her & tells her to go away.

jonathan talks alice down & alice decides not to tell him about liz's perfidy. marcus has clearly decided to re-dedicate himself to his family after his brush with danger, engaging in fraud for leo. liz is chastened & ashamed. marcus's son did great on his scholarship tests & word is spreading, bringing tons of new business to the tutorial college, so jonathan is pleased. at the end of the book, there's some hint that maybe jonathan knows that liz was cheating on him but chose to turn a blind eye. & marcus uses the proceeds of the fraud he committed to buy the silchester house & invites jonathan & liz to move back in for a reasonable rent. of course, he doesn't tell them he's the owner.

basically, this book is boring & manages to make no sense at the same time. skip it!