Every now and again a novel turns up that is both quirky and thought provoking. Matthew Reynolds’s Designs for a Happy Home is just such a book. It’s also a real page-turner.

It is Matthew’s debut novel, but not his first publication.

As a fellow of St Anne’s College, he has already written The Realms of Verse, writes regularly about literature for the London Review of Books, and is now working on a scholarly tome that examines literary translation.

Matthew describes Designs for a Happy Home as a novel in ten interiors. He borrows heavily from the genres of interior design manuals and self-help books.

He had been thinking about writing a novel for some time, and decided that the only way to do this was to extend his day. So for the past two years, he has got up at 5.30am to satisfy his urge to write fiction. But when his three children wake, he closes down his computer and gets on with the rest of the day.

By writing it in what he considers to be his own time, he has been able to produce the novel without disturbing his family or overcrowd his academic day.

He does admit, however, that from time to time he found himself thinking about his characters and wondering what they were up to while the mental box in which he had stored them was closed.

By the time the novel was finished they became as real to him as they will be to his readers.

Matthew’s central character is the interior designer Alizia Tame, who is famous for her amazing creations that transform homes, offices, restaurants and buildings. Everyone has heard of her and her designs, such as sofas that run on rails and furniture that can be hoisted to the ceiling if floor space is needed.

Matthew, who among other things, is the director of St Anne’s College art gallery, explained that he has always been sensitive to spaces and design.

“A room can affect my mood. Some rooms work for me; some don’t,” he said as he waved his hands at the jumble of books and glorious confusion of his college room. “Rooms are not just boxes, or space where things have happened.”

Matthew considers that he is the lucky one, as he knows what he likes.

“I don’t not use the furnishings in either my home or college room as a controlling mechanism, whereas my heroine does.

“Alizia has a design for everything from relationships, to work, to motherhood, but as the novel progresses – room by room – it becomes obvious that the people who matter most to her refuse to fit into her designs, despite the fact her creations were for them,” he said.

Matthew explained that he had great fun playing with the language of the self-help manuals as he takes the reader on an excursion through Alizia’s life, room by room, beginning with the threshold and then the hallway and ending with the dining room. As the gloss she puts into her endeavours begins to crack and it becomes clear that there is not a magic motto for everything, readers will undoubtedly begin to sympathise with Alizia’s plight.

Matthew says: “It’s not a straightforward narrative, and none of the characters are taken from life. My imagination doesn’t work like that. I like to imagine other people, make them up, create them,” though he does admit to having spoken to a young designer in Paris who did give him an idea for some of Alizia’s more outlandish creative projects.

“She was a designer who had created a Sellotape chair, which won her a commission for ten more. While she was thrilled to win her first order, the thought of covering ten more chairs with Sellotape filled her with dread.”

As to using a woman’s voice to narrate the novel – well, why not? Matthew sees no problem with this.

Designs for a Happy Home explores the self-defeating tendencies that develop out of the desire to create happiness. It is also the analysis of a modern marriage.

Matthew sees it as a novel with universal appeal and not a scholarly work.

His hope is that all those who enjoy satire, and perhaps a little comic confusion, will enjoy reading it as much as he enjoyed writing it.

l Designs for a Happy Home is published by Bloomsbury at £16.99.