The Lodgers
Ratings1
Average rating3
15
Ratings1
Average rating3
'What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.' After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep an eye on her wayward mother, Moffa. Living in a precarious sub-let, she is always on edge, anticipating a visit from the landlord or the arrival of the other resident. But her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new lodger she has never met, but whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination. The minor dramas of temporary living are prised open and ransacked in Holly Pester's irreverent reckoning with those who house us. This is a story about what it means to live and love within and outside of family structures. It is also a stunning first novel from a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.
Reviews with the most likes.
The strength of this book lies in its rendition of two different structures or points of view. One involves the narrator visiting her childhood home, while the other imagines someone else referred to as “you” inhabiting places as a lodger (places where she might have lived herself in the past, but it isn't clear). The concept is quite novel, and I liked it. However, ultimately, I didn't find much meaning in the chapters formed as “slice of life” (both the main narrator and the second mystery person whom the MC refers to as “you”). I enjoyed the exploration of belonging (both in a static place and in a stable relationship) and the difficulties of forming human connections with a nomadic existence.
Rating: 3.5/5
Thanks to Granta publications and netgalley for the ARC!!
