A sharp, sardonic, perceptive and painfully funny book about money, love and the sorrows and joys of modern family life by a talented debut author. A sharp, perceptive and painfully funny book about money, love and the sorrows and joys of modern family life. MEET THE MANVILLES. JERRY, a former award-winning adman who's beginning to leave a trail of ex-wives and semi-estranged children. PEN, his artist ex-wife, who's a lot more in love with her new garden in the South of France than with her new husband. ISOBEL, their daughter, trapped in air-conditioned Dubai, too busy managing her online farm to raise her own children. CONRAD, her brother, who tends to his bicycles and his latest crush from a grotty flat-share in East London. The House on the Hill was once their happy family home, regularly featured in the newspaper lifestyle sections and in Pen's popular children's books. But the house has fallen out of use, and so has the family. When Pen decides it's finally time to sell, Jerry discovers some unexpected new occupants who aren't so eager to move on. Soon the Manvilles - each of them funny, flawed and sporadically lovable - will have to say goodbye to The House on the Hill.