BOOK REVIEW / In brief: The Ex-Wives - Deborah Moggach: Heinemann, pounds 14.99

A cleverly messy-seeming novel mostly about the increasingly mutinous ex-wives and offspring of a superannuated actor. The structure, as so often in Moggach, is of a domestic symmetry placed in jeopardy and then patted back into temporary balance. But here her talent for describing family love struggles to find expression as the narrative meanders towards a jarringly melodramatic climax. 'We're not a mini-series, dear,' says one of the ex-wives at the end. Not yet, anyway.