We All Live Here

by Jojo Moyes

Instead she holes up in whatever part of the house is least full of angry old men or emotionally volatile teenagers and writes and writes, slowly shaping the three chapters that will get her out of at least one of the many messes that now make up her life.

“I’m a big fan of quiet. ‘No alarms and no surprises.’ Isn’t that what Radiohead said?” “I think that song was about suicide. But I get your general point.”

Yes, maybe this is a family. With all its mad history and chaos, heartbreaks, stupid jokes, ridiculous triumphs, and distinct lack of Noguchi coffee-tables, maybe this is my family.

It was like someone turning the overhead lights on at the end of the party and all these crazy cool people you’ve been dancing with all night are just sweaty idiots with their mascara halfway down their faces.”

Francesca cannot remember the last time anyone called her a girl, but that is the beauty of seeing someone you knew in your youth. There will be a part of yourselves that only ever remembers each other in that way.

feels something in her soften, some long-held tension start to evaporate, replaced instead by a sense of wonder, of the impermanence of things and how that, too, can be blissful and heartbreaking at the same time.

I like my madness visible from the outside.”

Lila listens and smiles and lets Penelope’s happiness spill out where it will. There is something lovely about someone being so unapologetically and unexpectedly happy in their sixties. It suggests hope for them all.