Roommates Wanted: A Novel

by Lisa Jewell

Overview

1990. Please write and tell me why you should live here.

Toby Dobbs received a big Victorian house with too many bedrooms to count as a wedding present from his father, but his marriage is over within a month. Very alone, and very lonely, Toby posts an advertisement seeking the "Unexpectedly Alone" to become his roommates. Fifteen years later the wayward souls he takes in are still living with him, with no intention of leaving.

2004. Please tell me how I can convince you to move out.

Toby Dobbs has met Leah Pilgrim from across the road, and they're falling in love. But before they can begin a new life together, Toby and Leah must help Toby's house of sweet slackers and lovelorn misfits grow up, solve their problems, and set themselves free. But can their new relationship survive the test?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061137471
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/11/2008
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.08(d)

About the Author

Lisa Jewell is the author of six novels, including Ralph's Party and Vince and Joy. Born and raised in north London, she lives there still with her husband and children.

Read an Excerpt

Roommates Wanted
A Novel

By Lisa Jewell HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2008
Lisa Jewell
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9780061137471

Chapter One

Fifteen Years Earlier

1 August 1990

Toby,

Jemma and I are leaving for Cape Town tomorrow morning. I'm sorry we'll miss your wedding next week, but I'm sure you understand.

I am enclosing a set of keys. I have bought you and Karen a house as a wedding gift. Peter got it at auction. I haven't seen it, but Peter assures me it was a good buy. In need of some TLC, but structurally sound. Which is just as well, as this house also represents your inheritance. I thought it best you have something now as I will be abroad for the foreseeable future and, once Jemma and I start our new family, things will get complicated in terms of who gets what. Much simpler this way. Property is the thing, Toby. You're on the ladder now. I can see big things happening with the London property market. Make the most of it.

Peter says there's one snag. A sitting tenant. I'm sure he'll be able to advise you on how to get him out. I've enclosed Peter's card, if you need him.

I wish you and Karen all the best for Saturday. Jemma and I will raise a glass of champagne to you both as the sun sets over Camps Bay.

Nothing much else to say except good luck, I suppose.

Best,

Reggie/Dad

In August 1990, Reggie Dobbs came to the bitter conclusion that raising his only son had been a complete waste of his time, his money and his sperm. He still recoiled at the memory of what bearingthis gigantic heffalump of a boy had done to his first wife's young, firm body and had never forgiven him for it. The enormous infant had continued to grow at a disgusting rate, six foot three at thirteen and thin as a streak of piss, useless at sports, covered in spots, not a pretty sight. Toby had inherited his model mother's height, but sadly not her looks. It was unnerving, craning your neck to look up into the ineffectual gaze of your gigantic son, looming over you like an overgrown bird of prey.

They'd sent him away to school at five years old and tried to make more babies, but none had come. And then Angela had died and Reggie had been stuck with this one son, a giant, a waste of space who claimed to be a 'poet'. Reggie said, 'Poet?! You look more like a teapot in that ridiculous hat!' But somehow, by some incredible stroke of luck, this strange boy of his had found himself a woman—a woman who was prepared to marry him. Not a beautiful girl, but then Toby should be grateful for what he could get.

He wanted to give them something, as he wasn't going to be a part of their lives, so he'd sat down with his accountant and concluded that his son was worth £75,000; £3,000 for every year of his life. He gave this money to his property broker and told him to get the best he could for it at auction.

And then he and his third wife slipped into the first-class cabin of a 747 and flew to Cape Town, where another property broker was waiting for them with the keys to a penthouse apartment overlooking the Atlantic. Reggie didn't leave Toby a forwarding address or a telephone number. He just disappeared.

Reggie wondered about Toby from time to time, especially after the kids arrived. He wondered if Toby and Karen had had children, if he was a grandfather yet; he wondered if Toby was happy, if he'd managed to make a living out of writing his wretched poetry or if he'd grown up and taken responsibility for himself.

He doubted it very much. But mostly he didn't think about Toby at all. Mostly Reggie just drank vodka, ate rich food, avoided his family and wondered when he was going to die.

Continues...

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Editorial Reviews

Jewell's boisterous sixth novel is a compulsively readable jaunt through the lives of a handful of suburban London misfits. Leah, a shopgirl whose live-in boyfriend flees when she mentions marriage, lives across the street from Toby, a struggling poet who lets out rooms in his bedraggled Victorian house to ragtag tenants who pay rent when they remember and clutter up his otherwise solitary life. There's a cabaret singer who depends on sugar daddies to keep afloat; a mailroom clerk who shares a room with his mother; and a stylish recluse. And then there's longtime tenant Gus, whom Leah finds dead on the front walk one day. When Toby discovers that Gus has willed him a sickly cat and a pile of pounds with the provision that Toby use the money to make his life "everything it could be," it provides the impetus for a shakeup at Toby's that sends the cast in different directions as they each find ways to grow up. Jewell (Vince and Joy) has a sure hand with the lightly humorous and romantic, and she delivers the goods: an eccentric cast, lively banter and plenty of warmhearted cheer. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Jewell (Vince and Joy) weaves together the oddball lives of London misfits in this well-crafted and entertaining seventh novel, published in Britain as 31 Dream Street. An eccentric poet, Toby has established a rooming house for anyone needing refuge from the real world. There's rocker Ruby, on her own since age 16; mysterious actress Joanne, who won't speak to anyone in the house; earnest mailroom clerk Con and his freewheeling mum, Melinda; and recluse Gus, who's been there since before Toby inherited the sprawling house. When Gus dies, he leaves Toby money and instructions that Toby must use it to improve his life and not die alone as he did. With the help of the cute, friendly young woman across the street, Toby not only takes on a massive remodeling of the house, but decides to help his flatmates overhaul their lives. The characters are very appealing in their own quirky ways, and Jewell does a marvelous job tying their stories together. A little less like chick lit than some of her previous novels, this would also appeal to male readers who enjoy Nick Hornby. For most fiction collections.
—Rebecca Vnuk

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

School Library Journal

Romance and real estate combine in the latest from British novelist Jewell (Vince and Joy, 2006, etc.). On one side of a North London suburban street lives 35-year-old Leah, who is having boyfriend trouble. On the other side of the street, in an ornate but neglected Victorian curiosity, lives socially uncertain poet Toby, whose father gave him the house as his legacy 15 years ago, and who has filled it with lame duck and oddball tenants. As the book opens, Leah finally meets Toby-whom she's observed for ages-while standing over the corpse of his oldest tenant, found dead outside. When Toby learns the tenant has left him a lot of money, he realizes he is now free to sell and move to Cornwall. But first he must evict his collection of waifs-and-strays tenants and remodel his house, and for that he seeks neighbor Leah's help. Hand-in-hand with the domestic renovation, Toby himself is transformed from grungy dweeb into insightful partner who actively helps sort out the lives of those renting his rooms: young Con, in love with Daisy from the office; mysterious Joanne, who must move beyond her tragic past; and slutty, unscrupulous musician Ruby, who finally gets with the program. Leah and Toby eventually reach a fairy-tale conclusion too, in a junk shop overlooking the sea. A skillfully written, cheerful book.

Kirkus Reviews