The Time of Her Life by Tracy Bloom

Chirpy hairdresser Kim Jacobs loves everything about life with Richard, her stuffy intellectual husband. For his fiftieth birthday, which falls the day before son Harry leaves their home in Lancaster to go to university in Nottingham, Kim throws a big surprise party. She makes a long speech praising Richard and tells their friends and relations she cannot wait to spend all his future birthdays with him. She is understandably devastated when, after the party is over, Richard announces he is leaving her for the woman next door.

Kim drives Harry to Nottingham, insisting that Richard stays at home to deal with ‘congealed dip and hardened birthday cake’. In Harry’s student house there is a spare room where Kim stays while she sorts her life out. After certain house rules are put in place Kim is accepted by Harry’s housemates, who learn to appreciate her skills. The descriptions of Kim’s efforts to keep the kitchen and bathroom clean, in a house occupied by man-babies, are realistic. As the first term wears on Kim’s natural talent for counselling helps her young flatmates to negotiate problems with love affairs, studies – and hairstyles.

Sonny, who is eccentric and sweet-natured, persuades the others to let Kim stay. He cannot see having a mate’s mother living in his student house as anything other than a good thing. Posh Angus, who Kim thinks has lovely manners, appreciates her housekeeping abilities, even though she keeps drinking his wine. Predictably it is Harry who has a problem with his Mum’s presence. Max and Annie, Kim’s colleagues when she gets a job at the local chip shop, add a real-world element to the academic atmosphere.

I really like author Tracy Bloom’s funny and original premise for The Time of Her Life. It will resonate with those mothers who feel jealous when their teenagers head off to university, but all mothers of young adults beginning to make their way in life will enjoy this novel.