• Fiction. By Fiona Neill. Riverhead, $24.95. Grade: A-

Plot in a nutshell: Lucy Sweeney goes placidly amid the noise and haste of her stay-at-home mom life: misplaced house keys, missing pets, mischievous children and misbehaving friends having affairs. Normal enough, but Lucy's chaos is slummier than most. Her architect husband, Tom, doesn't think it's amusing when she mistakes urine for lemonade or e-mails the details of their sex life to the class list - although readers will.

It can only get more hectic when Lucy gets herself elected class secretary, under the thumb of an Alpha Mum whose motto is "Harvard or Die." Other class officers include a Yummy Mummy with a designer outfit for every school occasion, even the re-creation of a Roman market. And the Sexy Domesticated Dad of this team makes it no secret that he yearns for Lucy, a feeling that she uneasily returns, despite her marriage.

Sample of prose: Lucy's numerous parking tickets have finally brought the bailiff to her door, literally: "So when I heard Tom coming upstairs, I persuaded the bailiff to pretend he was a Jehovah's Witness. 'Come Armageddon,' he said loudly, peering across my shoulder at Tom, who was still dressed in a pair of pajamas, 'only the chosen will be saved. As a sinner you can repent, but only if you have resolved any outstanding parking issues.'" Tom gladly lets Lucy deal with the pseudo-mendicant. Good thinking, Slummy Mummy!

Pros: In the chick lit genre, Slummy's lack of whining is a relief. Lucy and Tom care for one another and make a valiant effort to keep their home fires burning.

Cons: The final showdown between all the adulterous and almost-adulterous characters, in a local no-tell hotel, becomes a deus ex machina of sorts. It's too crowded to be natural. And wouldn't Lucy be more curious about her very proper mother-in-law, off to Marrakech to shack up with the love of her youth?

Final word: Lucy's conversation with her No-Fulfillment-in-Domesticity mother is food for thought, for feminists of all stripes. This philosophical mother-daughter moment will have Mummies debating their life choices in book groups everywhere.