★What seduced publishing trailblazer Hilary McPhee to an exotic writing project in Jordan? Curiosity, political engagement, mad bravery?
★This is a book about loneliness and learning how to manage it in the wake of tumultuous events: the death of a parent, the dissolution of a marriage, a serious illness......
★A story with all the exhilaration of exile then banishment in other people's houses - an attic in London, apartments in Italy and Amman - where she watches other women managing magnificently to live alone. A failed marriage, then a stymied book were a double hit that risk-taking McPhee could only face by fleeing into the world. Then, hardest of all was her return to Australia to face the music, pick up the pieces, and find her strength in starting over again. McPhee's brutally honest memoir traverses wild terrain.

In Other People's Houses publishing legend Hilary McPhee exchanges one hemisphere for another. Fleeing the aftermath of a failed marriage, she embarks on a writing project in the Middle East, for a member of the Hashemite royal family, a man she greatly respects. Here she finds herself faced with different kinds of exile, new kinds of banishment.From apartments in Cortona and Amman and an attic in London, McPhee watches other women managing magnificently alone as she flounders through the mire of Extreme Loneliness.Other People's Houses is a brutally honest memoir, funny, sad, full of insights into worlds to which she was given privileged access, and of the friendships which sustained her. And ultimately, of course, this is the story of returning home, of picking up the pieces, and facing the music as her house and her life takes on new shapes.

Hilary McPhee is a writer and editor. She founded McPhee Gribble Publishers with Diana Gribble in 1975, was Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts 1994-97, and inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at Melbourne University until 2004. Her books include Other People's Words, Wordlines and Memoirs of a Young Bastard: The Diaries of Tim Burstall.