Author: Holly Pester
Publisher: Granta
Hardback
One of our books of the year 2024!
Sam says: The Lodgers is the debut novel by the poet Holly Pester and it’s a true poet’s novel. It traces the slippery relationships between a single mother, her daughter, and their Lodgers. In all of Pester’s work there is an interest in form and humour (her debut collection, also published by Granta, was called Comic Timing), and this novel unearths the absurdity of some of the traps of relationality that language places us in. There's so much written about Family and Home, but so rarely do people write about the people that squirm around at the edge of these ideas, the ones who draw the chalk outlines. The prose is such a joy, all the way through. So attentive to what is hidden in reflexive, idiomatic language and what is revealed in our interactions with kids. It's all so tender and exact. Anyone who wants to be a writer should read this!