Close to Home (novel)

Close to Home, is the second novel by English author Deborah Moggach, first published in 1979 by Collins. It is mentioned in the 6th edition of the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide. Like her first novel "You Must Be Sisters" it is semi-autobiographical and relates to a time when she was living in Camden Town with two small children, a husband who was often away on business, and struggling to write a novel.
Plot introduction.
The book is set in the long hot summer of 1976 in a suburban London street and concerns the occupants of two adjacent houses. In one lives Kate Cooper who struggles with her two young children and the domestic chores whilst keeping up appearances for her high-flying husband who works as a eurocrat in Brussels, spending little time at home. In the other lives Sam Green is struggling to write a novel whilst his wife goes out to work running a psychiatric practice and his angst-ridden teenage daughter binge eats in her bedroom. Kate and Sam are drawn together whilst their families are seemingly unaware...
Reception.
'Funny, affectionate and unpretentious…always a pleasure to read. Moggach has acute things to say about young married life, about looking after children, about the secret places behind noisy North London streets.' ("New Statesman", Mar 30, 1979)