Housebreaking
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3.8 • 11 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Following a long-standing feud and looking to settle the score, a woman decides to dismantle her home—alone and by hand—and move it across a frozen pond during a harsh New England winter in this mesmerizing debut.
Home is certainly not where Del’s heart is. After a local scandal led to her parents’ divorce and the rest of her family turned their backs on her, Del left her small town and cut off contact.
Now, with both of her parents gone, a chance has arrived for Del to retaliate.
Her uncle wants the one thing Del inherited: the family home.
Instead of handing the place over, and with no other resources at her disposal, Del decides she will tear the place apart herself—piece by piece.
But Del will soon discover, the task stirs up more than just old memories as relatives—each in their own state of unraveling—come knocking on her door.
This spare, strange, magical book is a story not only about the powerlessness and hurt that run through a family but also about the moments when brokenness can offer us the rare chance to start again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a winning if far-fetched debut, Hubbard depicts the hardscrabble life of a young woman who, spurred on by a family feud and a desire for improved self-esteem, embarks on a Fitzcarraldo-esque task. Twenty-something and unemployed, Del Murrow gets an offer from her uncle Chuck for her abandoned childhood home, which she inherited and stands on land ripe for development. She doesn't want to give Chuck the satisfaction of demolishing this last remnant of her immediate family, but she needs cash. As an act of revenge for how Chuck always looked down on her family, she agrees to sell the land but not the house, and in the transaction is deeded an adjacent swampy tract where, over the course of a cold winter, she moves the demolished house's debris, proud to leave an eyesore in view of Chuck's prospective clients. Del finds unlikely allies in her mother's friend Eleanor; Chuck's wife, Jeanne; and a night-shift supermarket clerk with whom she builds a tentative friendship. Despite the outlandish premise and some repetitive passages of Del's work dismantling the house, Hubbard skillfully captures Del's desperation while slowly unraveling the story of her late parents' lives. This is a moving take on how a hard-knock existence can be transformed by friendship and determination.
