The Household Spirit
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
There’s something wrong next door. At least, that’s what neighbors Howie Jeffries and Emily Phane both think. Since his daughter and wife moved out, Howie has been alone, an accidental recluse content with his fishing and his dreams of someday sailing away from himself on a boat. Emily couldn’t be more different: she’s irreverent, outgoing and seemingly well-adjusted. But when Emily returns from college to care for her dying grandfather, Howie can’t help but notice her increasingly erratic behavior - not to mention her newfound love of nocturnal gardening.
The thing is, although they’ve lived side by side in the only two houses on rural Route 29 in upstate New York since Emily was born, Howie and Emily have never so much as spoken. Both have their reasons: Howie is debilitatingly shy; Emily has been hiding the fact that she suffers from a nighttime affliction that makes her both terrified to go to sleep, and question the very reality of her waking life . It is only when tragedy strikes that their worlds, finally, become joined in ways neither of them could ever have imagined.
A poignant, big-hearted, and often humorous novel about two very unique individuals unceremoniously thrown together, The Household Spirit is a story about how little we know the people we see every day - and of the unexpected capabilities of the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two identical houses sit on an isolated stretch of Route 29 in Queens Falls, N.Y. In one house lives Howard Jeffries a divorced, 50-year-old worker at a water-treatment plant who leads a solitary life. He thinks often of fishing, his now-defunct family unit, and his mysterious next-door neighbor. Emily Phane, the same age as his daughter, lives next to Howard and tends to her elderly grandfather. Although they have not spoken, their mutual watching of and interest in each other provides a strange comfort for Howard, her presence stirs a protective paternal instinct that has been dormant since the departure of his daughter, and for Emily, watching Howard distracts from debilitating sleep troubles, a complicated love life, and her grandfather's mortality. When Emily's desperation comes to a breaking point, her cry for help elicits a response from her shy and awkward neighbor. From there, an unlikely and close friendship develops that changes the direction of both their lives. Wodicka's story of two eccentrics living a strange coexistence can be jarring, but it's also touching. The accounts of sleep paralysis, grief, and personal demons make for a novel well worth reading.
