We Are All Made of of Glue - Marina Lewycka

I have absolutely no idea who gave me this book (my bet is that it could be Raja who loves humour) and I always kept it off judging the book by its cover and its title. But it turned out to be a delightful read in the end.

The protagonist Georgina Sinclair is an aspiring novel who writes for a magazine called 'Adhesives' (about adhesives), is married with two kids, one girl college going and one boy school going. Her marriage falls apart when her husband leaves her after they have a fight and she is left with her son Ben who starts getting into different religious cults who foresee dark futures etc for mankind. 

Georgie meanwhile makes friends with a ninety year old neighbour Naomi Shapiro who picks up a lot of stuff of her husband's stuff which Georgie throws out (leading to his walking out). Naomi is a Jew who lives with a bunch of cats and is constantly in some trouble. The local real estate guys are moving in and so are social security types who are worried that she cannot manage alone. All she has is Georgie (and she for G) and they negotiate their lives and its twists and turns together (and affairs with poetic real estate men) until it all comes together in the end with a house that burns down. The house which everyone is after was never Naomi's (in fact she is not Naomi at all), her former lover's son who returns from Israel, a Palestinian who helps fix Naomi's broken house and his two useless assistants Nabeel and another chap.

Witty and delightful in a very British way, Marina leads you into a layered world of complex relationships, human and of the world, religion, politics, war, racism and figures that it is all made of glue (she scientifically proves it too!). I really enjoyed it.