Roommates Wanted

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?

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Originally published under the title 31 Dream Street: United Kingdom: Penguin Group, 2007.

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.