This is a book you will fall in love with. Moggach’s utterly brilliant ability to create characters who, like us all, are full of flaws but are yet so genuinely believable - I can identify with all of them in one guise or another. She has woven together all of her characters and their complexities so well, with such intimate detail, that it is difficult to remember that they are only characters and not really people I know.

This book is so beautifully written, and although the themes and storylines are incredibly simple, I did not want it to end.

I’ve read a lot of Deborah Moggach’s books over the years - she’s had a long writing career - and they’re always a very good read. Here, James, a once distinguished professor, is struggling after a fall - and possibly teetering on the edge of dementia. His children Phoebe and Robert can give only limited support, so when live-in carer Mandy comes along she’s a bit of a godsend.

Mandy, with her pudding-bowl haircut and casual racism, isn’t like them... but James seems to be having the time of his life, eating at Nando’s, gossiping about the neighbours and people-watching at the Bicester Shopping Village. Indeed he seems, observe his children, to be becoming a completely different person, and they begin to question Mandy’s motives.

When the truth comes out, though, it’s a surprise to everyone, not least the reader.

The Carer is really more about Robert and Phoebe than either James or Mandy, though we do see a bit of the backstories of both. It’s also about marriage, class divisions, and finding your place in the world, with more than a dash of humour and sadness.

The incidental characters - Robert’s newsreader wife Farida, Phoebe’s part time lover Torren - are convincingly drawn, as is Mandy herself. Stella’s animal charm and living-for-the-moment nature is perhaps a little overstated but she was easy to visualise.

The title sounds exactly like one of the current crop of psychological thrillers - they all seem to be called The Something - but it’s certainly not that. It’s an insightful, humorous and often unexpected story about family - and other - relationships.

The Carer by Deborah Moggach is a novel about family secrets and people not being who you think they are. I preferred the first part and lost interest after the twist reveal.