Paperback: The Sex Life of My Aunt by Mavis Cheek

Aunts often pop up as characters in Mavis Cheek's fiction, but it's the author herself who comes across as the most auntie-like of all. Energetic, witty and brimming with good sense, Cheek's astute social comedies point out to receptive ears the pitfalls of love, sex, and the contradictory mess that is the female state.

Her 10th novel examines the cost (particularly to the heroine's Peter Jones credit card) of an adulterous liaison between a west London housewife and a sexy but rather feckless, down-at-heel younger man.

Dilys has been married since her early twenties to a successful, older man. Two decades on, her husband, Francis, is looking forward to retirement, while Dilys feels too young for weekends in Bath accompanied by a man in a blazer. Instead, she falls for a stranger on a train and, in true Brief Encounter style, prepares to send "a bomb rolling right slap bang down the middle" of her impeccable pale-grey Wilton carpet to the very heart of her marriage.

Passion vs the cosy comforts of soft furnishings, grandchildren and the love of a good man lie at the crux of Dilys's dilemma – one that Cheek helps to resolve by a rifle through Dilys's socio-economic past.

Sprung from a long line of women thwarted by inadequate men and a lack of cash, Dilys is first-generation posh. You can be in no doubt that auntie Mavis, ever the pragmatist, will tell us which side Dilys's bread is buttered on.