No one can accuse Diane Danvers Simmons of telling a familiar story in this is an utterly unique situation, as she draws her readers into a time and place when London was blowing up all over the place in the late 1970’s, literally, between IRA bombings, Disco fever, platform shoes, women’s liberation and her mother.

My Mother Next Door is much more than just a family tale, as it portrays a brilliant sense of time, history, and politics, with continuity into the modern age. Through British humor, self -deprecation and candor with poignant, irreverent observations about her totally unapologetic mother (who she describes “more like medusa on a cocaine binge” than Mother Mary, when enraged), Diane subtly weaves the anecdotal life lessons she learned growing up.

Ultimately, My Mother Next Door offers a fresh take on motherly abandonment (albeit next door) as it does not shy away from the darker painful memories, the universal conundrums of the mother and daughter relationship, and how Danvers Simmons navigates her totally unblended family in the process.

In the end, Diane Danvers Simmons frames her life and that of her mothers as a tale of empowerment, the beauty of the indomitable human spirit, and the freedom in finding laughter, curiosity, compassion and forgiveness in the absurdity of life.