Product Description

When sixteen-year-old Marianne Flowers is invited to a party in a genteel house she has no idea that the house - and what she experiences there - including the stately bathroom - will change her life. Not to mention the boy who introduces her to red wine, sophisticated conversation and an apparently liberated future. But marriage to Charles turns out to be far from liberating and soon Marianne finds herself living in a basement flat, with a cramped, ignoble bathroom, and a way of life that is very far from her hopes, romantic or otherwise. Life, it seems, is going on elsewhere. But Charles' mother starts feeding her with books - classics, feminist essays, fine literature - and soon Marianne realises that there is a whole, bright world unfolding before her. But how will this new, independently minded Marianne find her place in this brand new world?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186607 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Daily Express
'Yesterday’s Houses is a unique achievement – a really funny book you can file under Feminism.'

John Harding, Daily Mail
'wit, irony and great warmth. Definitely one to immerse yourself in.’

Customer Reviews

Rising Above
In the opening chapter we find Marianne, a seventeen year old poorly educated shop assistant in the cosmetics department of a store, being casually invited by a total stranger to a party in a middle class house. There she meets Charles. We are told nothing of their courtship - simply, on page 13, that they are married.

Charles comes from a bourgeois family. He has a charming and sensible mother, who will be tower of strength to Marianne. But Charles himself is a thoroughly unpleasant character. As a parlour socialist, he claims to dislike everything bourgeois. The first home of Charles and Marianne is a horrid basement, but he is saving up to be able to afford a mortgage for something better. Unwilling to spend money on professionals, he is an incompetent DIY fanatic and in their second and third house Marianne has to live uncomfortably for months on end while he rips up floorboards and makes a mess in every room at the same time (including the bathroom, when a comfortable and cheerful bathroom is something Marianne longs for with the passion of someone whose own parental home had a horrid one.) He is completely self-centred, randy, and imposing kinky couplings on his wife. Marianne doesn't see the point of them, but for some time (touchingly almost too good to be true) she goes along with all his ways: she knows he is odd (perhaps all men are), but she keeps her thoughts to herself, for she likes being married; and she thinks she has a lot to learn, socially and educationally. Her mother-in-law introduces her to Greek mythology; and whenever Marianne hears a word or a name she does not know, she looks it up - and so she gradually educates herself and comes to respond to great literature.

It takes Marianne about seven years (about a third of the way through the book) to admit to herself how sterile (in more senses than one) is her marriage and how bleak her life. And then she begins to stand up for herself and for a while to become independent in ways that are exhilarating to read about. But just as we have come to cheer for her, she finds herself on another roller-coaster of fulfilment and despair, despair and fulfilment - of sorts. And brilliantly though it is done, I for one began to lose some of my sympathy (though not my liking) for Marianne. Her choice of men and of houses is always, to say the least, unwise; and as she moves from one grotty house to another, surely she could have done at least something during so many years to do them up a bit and get that decent bath-tub she was longing for: even her coarse proletarian neighbours manage that. Maybe in her last house - the eighth - she will get round to it. She'd deserve it - but I wouldn't bet on it.

So I had to suspend my disbelief from time to time, (and, just in case there are autobiographical elements in the book, I hope Mavis Cheek will forgive me for that remark), but it was an enjoyable, witty and sardonic read.

The wit of (Jane) Austen
Mavis Cheek has the wit of (Jane) Austen, the seriousness of (Virginia) Woolf and the morality of (George) Eliot, while remaining her original and thoroughly modern self. This is probably her best book so far. I heard her read at the Edinburgh Book festival and, reading this much later, felt she didn't then pick the 'best bits' but then the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. If it has any faults it seemed a little drawn-out at the end but I expect the author wanted to tie up loose ends.

Too many horribles
A girl of the seventies grows up, slowly and sometimes painfully, though always with a sense of humour. The seventies part is very well drawn. For those of us who shared that period it brings back some memories. But the book is not always well written - for example I got sick of the word "horrible" which occurred many many times, often on the same page. Later "crap" comes in to complement it! Some passages, such as her dinner party comedy cooking episode, were just too long.
The bathroom theme which recurrs through the novel is different, but I agree with another reviewer that Marianne could have made changes to the houses herself rather than moaning that the current man in her life did not do it. A little more do-it-yourself as she grew up would have rung more true that the continuance of her male-dependence.
Sometimes the book's structure was clever, leaving gaps in the story which got filled in gradually.
All in all I would say a good read, though lacking depth.