Published by Viking Canada, 352 pp, $32, hardcover

In case you were wondering: yes, the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the 1984 U.K. coal miners’ strike can in fact all coexist in one kooky-comic novel. Never mind that We Are All Made of Glue initially seems like a quaint, barmy British mystery involving an eccentric Jewish cat lady—you know, the kind who pronounces love like “loff”—living in a filthy, stinking, mouldering London mansion. No, this isn’t just cups of musty tea, Marmite on toast, and kitty turds in the hallway—there’s also pain, darkness, handcuff sex, and, natch, varieties of glue.

Lewycka pulled a similar trick by slipping a poignant immigrant tale inside broad comedy in her lauded first novel, 2005’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. This time, the guide is endearingly self-mocking narrator Georgie Sinclair, whose husband has walked out, leaving her decidedly askew and sexually pent-up. She’s supposed to be editing the temptingly titled trade magazine Adhesives in the Modern World and parenting her apocalypse-fixated teenage son, but when she spots tiny, strange Naomi Shapiro rifling through her “skip”—that’s British for trash can—her curiosity is piqued and adventure ensues.

The author gives readers much bang for their buck, jamming her story with on-point yet irresistible characters, all circling Naomi’s heinously unsanitary, highly valuable estate.

Slapsticky comedy is milked from collisions between Georgie, lust-inducing realtors named, yes, Wolfe and Diabello, Palestinian handymen, duelling social workers, a mysterious one-eyed Jewish gentleman, and more. Everyone, it seems, has an agenda easily misunderstood by everyone else, and some have unexpected, often tragic histories.

Lewycka seems to believe that if everybody could, say, hang out and barbecue, then maybe we’d solve humanity’s long history of cultural clashes. The often daft Georgie—readers will trump her powers of deduction and basic historical knowledge—muses: “If you could get the human bonding right, maybe the other details—laws, boundaries, constitution—would all fall into place. It was just a case of finding the right adhesive for the adherends. Mercy. Forgiveness. If only it came in tubes.”

Okay, sounds rather grade-school simplistic? Nevertheless, these pained, goofy characters stick with you—uh-huh, like glue.