Number 5 by Glenn Patterson

Welcome to the house of fun

Take an ordinary house in an ordinary street, and zoom in exuberantly on its successive occupants: this is what Glenn Patterson does in his compelling new novel. Number 5 begins in the mid-1950s. The postwar housing boom is affecting Belfast, and developers are building terraces all around the outskirts. You get a sense of new beginnings, mud and cement dust, the countryside requisitioned for building sites.

What comes next is the arrival of people going up in the world, achieving home ownership following a two-up, two-down upbringing and early married life in rented rooms. The 1950s Falloons are the first to settle in No 5, he a boilermaker, she a wife and soon-to-be mother – Stella, whose story forms the opening episode of the novel.

Stella, for whom incessant homemaking doesn't quite add up, requires an outlet for her energies and chooses one with radical consequences. Move forward a decade, and we're in the home of Margaret and Rodney McGovern, with the pair preparing for the annual New Year party at the Hidegs down the street. Andras Hideg, a refugee from Budapest, has married a local girl and started a plumbing business – not a dangerous enterprise, you might think, but that's without taking into account the peculiar circumstances of Northern Ireland.

One of the great merits of Patterson's novel is the way it encompasses changes of atmosphere, sectarian reinforcement, shifts in perspective, without resorting to a documentary plainness. The effects of social or political upheaval are registered obliquely, and with a telling economy. You might miss what's going on if you don't pay attention to Patterson's implications, as well as assertions.

The McGoverns are followed by a Chinese family whose distinctiveness makes them a target for abuse. When the Tans put the house on the market, it is bought by a family named Eliot. The mother, Catriona, is driven to her wits' end when her daughter, son and husband succumb to a dose of born-again religion.

Finally, No 5 becomes the home of Mel and Toni (Antonia), friends and business-partners, who embody something of the jadedness of the Nineties. All these comings and goings are monitored by Ivy Moore across the street; a teenage bride when the houses were built, she celebrates her 60th birthday at the end of the book. Number 5 is Glenn Patterson's fifth novel, and best to date. It's a confident undertaking, full of brio, often funny, and abundant in all kinds of clever touches, not least its harnessing of a structure as purposeful as the scaffolding of the house itself. This is an author whose vigour and flair keep us reading avidly as he exercises his capacity to make the everyday engrossing.

Patricia Craig's biography of Brian Moore is published by Bloomsbury