The sensitivities of women working full-time in the home have been fully aired since that budget - but what about the growing number of men who have become house husbands? Owen Whittaker's entertaining first novel is a lighthearted and topical look at an over-aged lad forced by circumstance (and his wife) to stay at home with the babies full-time so she can earn enough to keep their precarious household afloat. The lad is failed rock star, Andy, a shambolic but ultimately endearing character, who has retreated to a crumbling Georgian pile in west Cork with his wife. The good life is going sour now that they have two small children and not enough money to keep Andy in beer and pay for a minder. Whittaker tells some bitter home truths about the problems couples who switch roles can encounter in the course of his entertaining story about life, love, parenthood and men behaving not-so-badly after all.