After the success of Man and Boy, One For My Baby and Man and Wife, best-selling British author Tony Parsons is back with his latest offering, The Family Way.

The Family Way revolves around the lives of the Jewell sisters Cat, Jessica and Megan, whose mother walks out on them when they are 11, 7 and 3 respectively. As their actor father is constantly at work, Cat is left to fill in the gaps left by the parental units, doing the household chores as well as caring for her sisters.

Years on, the sisters are grown up and are each leading different lives. Or so we think. In fact, all 3 are agonising over being pregnant.

Cat, now a manager at a Japanese restaurant, hooks up with a divorced martial arts teacher with a teenaged son, and after much deliberation, she decides she wants to give Rory a baby. Trouble is, he’s had a vasectomy. Will he be willing to reverse his procedure and go through the child-raising process all over again?

Jessica longs to have a baby with her husband, Paulo, believing that will make them feel complete as a family. Paulo adores his wife and wants her to be happy, but he has his own apprehensions, seeing how a baby is slowly breaking down his brother’s marriage.

Youngest sister Megan, a trainee doctor, is feeling jaded by her two-timing boyfriend. She has a one-night stand with Kirk, an Australian diver, at a party – resulting in an unplanned pregnancy. She’s tempted to get an abortion – after all, how can you take care of someone when you can’t even take care of yourself?

Like in his other books, Tony Parsons’s focus in The Family Way remains very family and relationship-centered – issues readers will be able to relate to in one way or another, being so close to the heart and home.

Although I started reading the book with a somewhat mild detachment, I eventually warmed up to the characters, taking a special interest in Megan and Kirk’s on-again, off-again relationship, and Jessica and Paulo’s roller-coaster quest for a child of their own. I also couldn’t help but feel utter disgust towards the girls’ mother, Olivia. Aside from not feeling any remorse about leaving her daughters, she makes caustic remarks towards the girls about having a family, like, “Your parents ruin the first half of your life, and your children ruin the second half.” It makes me so thankful for my own mother.

With the gift of writing prose that is poignant and stirring, Parsons, a columnist for UK daily newspaper The Mirror, draws readers in and connects them with his characters in a personal and sensitive manner. The Family Way remains on par with his successful debut novel, Man And Boy, and its sequel, Man And Wife.

The Family Way‘s contemporary look at family life and introducing new life into the world is both endearing and moving – the Singapore government should consider recommending this book to citizens as a form of encouragement to, ahem, procreate.

That aside, whether this book will be able to repeat the success of Man And Boy – which won the UK Book of The Year in 2001 and was turned into a BBC drama series of the same name in 2002 – is still to be seen. But in my opinion, any novel by the wonderful Parsons is a clear winner.

The Family Way is available at Borders, Kinokuniya and Times for $27.30.

Image from amazon.co.uk.