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OUR HOUSE
by Louise Candlish
Berkley, August 2018
$26.00
ISBN: 045148911X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Fiona Lawson returns home one afternoon to find a moving van in front of her house. When Fiona confronts the woman whose things are being moved into the house, she discovers her house has been sold and her husband and two boys have disappeared. So opens OUR HOUSE, a novel by Louise Candlish. As a reader, it is impossible to foresee the strange twists this book is going to take, but from the opening page it is clear it will be captivating - and not the book that you expected.

Without giving away spoilers to this twisty tale, it is fair to say that the presentation of the narrative is a bit unusual and at at times a little difficult to follow. We find out first thing about the house being sold, but then the book backtracks and tells us the story of how this came to be through a series of podcasts by Fiona on a popular website called The Victim and then word documents from Fiona's husband Bram. Thrown in are the responses from viewers to Fiona's podcasts. If there is one thing that got under my skin about this book, is the presentation of the story through media. I found it to be a bit tedious after awhile.

At first Fiona and Bram's versions of what happened were fairly consistent and as a reader I found it easy to have sympathy for Fiona. But as the book progresses sympathy shifts to Bram at times but also with feelings of complete loathing for both Fiona and Bram popping up. Each has ugly secrets that come into play leading to some interesting twists.

Although the couple appears early on to have the welfare of their boys at heart as they hammer out an unusual separation agreement involving "bird nesting," it soon becomes clear that each parent is mostly concerned with their own interests. As an aside, the concept of Bird Nesting was unfamiliar to me but would certainly ease the trauma suffered by the children of divorce. It entails the children remaining in the family home while the parents move in and out as per their custody agreement with the parent not in residence at any given time living in a separate apartment which might also be shared by the divorcing couple. Unfortunately, this arrangement has its flaws as we learn.

On a final note, it is worth mentioning that by the end, it is not exactly clear cut as to what has and will happen to the Lawson family. It is clear, however, that it will not be a "happily ever after" ending.

Nothing is as it first appears and everything you think you know about what is going on proves to be wrong. If ever there was a book where Sir Walter Scott's observation "Oh What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," applied, it would be this one.

§ Caryn St.Clair resides in University City, Missouri and is a former elementary school media specialist, President of the Parks Commission and a docent at the St.Louis Zoo.

Reviewed by Caryn St Clair, July 2018

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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