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WORK TITLE: Our House
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.louisecandlish.com/
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Hexham, Northumberland, England; married; children: daughter.
EDUCATION:Attended University College, London
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Louise Candlish’s Our House is hardly her first book, or even her first novel in the subgenre called “domestic suspense” (she has published more than a dozen others) but it is her first novel to receive an American release. The novel examines the dissolution of a marriage between Londoner housewife Fiona (known as Fi) and her hard-working philanderer of a husband Bram. Fi caught Bram with another woman and threw him out, but the two worked out an arrangement where they share custody of their two sons. One night one of them stays in the family home with the children, while the other stays in a nearby apartment. The following night they switch.
One day, however, Fi arrives back at the house to discover that a strange couple is moving in. It appears her ex has sold the house out from under her. Bram “left the kids with his mother after telling them some ridiculous cover story,” revealed Kristin Centorcelli in a Criminal Element review. “Fi is stumped. After all, Bram is a cheater, but could he actually do something this horrible to his wife and kids? Of course, nothing is simple, and Candlish drops readers into a truly dark rabbit hole of blackmail and deception, the lengths that some will go to in order to protect themselves, and the lies we tell those we love the most.”
Candlish’s setup—the idea that a house can be sold without the consent of both owners—is based on a real crime, sparked by skyrocketing housing prices in and around London. “In the last twenty years in London, homes have been discussed as property rather than … ‘home,'” Candlish declared in a Criminal Element website interview, “and one of the reasons I wanted to write Our House is that I felt worried. We’ve very quickly and quite dangerously started to make decisions based on what a house is worth rather than other things, like ‘Should we move because it’s good for the children,’ or ‘Should I move because I’ve had a great job offer.’ All the decisions seem to center on how much the house is worth and whether it’s the optimum time to cash in this asset.” “Here in the U.K., you can buy a house without meeting your lawyer, you can do it all online, which sounds extraordinary but is true,” Candlish stated in a Publishers Weekly interview with Pam Lambert. “So the book’s been described as a how-to guide to steal a house.”
Neither Fi nor Bram is innocent of blame in the mess that emerges from the illegal sale of the house, but the author manages to portray both of them sympathetically. “Candlish skillfully portrays Fi’s friendships with other wives in her South London neighborhood,” opined Patrick Anderson in the Washington Post Book World, “where the author herself lives with her husband and daughter. The friends discuss the challenges of motherhood, as well as of marriage. Over gin and tonics one evening, one friend admits, ‘If I had my way, children would stay in primary school forever, and it would never occur to them that we’re not always right about absolutely everything.'” “Candlish … digs deep for both suspense and compassion,” declared a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “but comes up empty with Fi, whose almost stubborn cluelessness about the state of her marriage … and, later, her insistence on being a victim.”
Critics generally praised Candlish’s novel. “Like a driver putting the key in the ignition and a foot on the accelerator of a powerful car,” wrote Claire Hopley in the Washington Times, “Louise Candlish’s swift exposition of the plot and its emotional underpinning speeds away with her readers, and keeps them clinging to their seats, eager to learn more about why and how Bram managed the heist.” “Louise Candlish manages to trick the reader at every deviously plotted turn,” stated a contributor to Book Review Café. “Despite guessing a couple of the twists there was one that gave me a jaw dropping, ‘did I really just read that?’ moment which was superbly executed. I’m sure Our House will be one of the most talked about books of the year, and I can see why. It’s highly original, topical, and one that will cause debate. Would I recommend it? Most definitely.” “Fresh, fun, and engrossing, Our House is a new take on domestic suspense: a binge-worthy story of secrets in a marriage that will take readers down a totally unexpected path,” enthused a reviewer for the Crime by the Book website. “Come to Our House for its gorgeous packaging; stay for its inventive storytelling structure and page-turning reading experience. Our House is a little bit twisty, a touch dramatic, and a whole lot of suspense reading fun. It’s hard to describe this book as anything but propulsive—from its first page to its very shocking last, I was hooked on Candlish’s inventive story of betrayal, guilt, and relationships gone very wrong.” “American fans of domestic suspense,” concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “will want to see more from this talented author.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookseller, September 14, 2018, “Our House: Louise Candlish,” p. 9.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2018, review of Our House.
Publishers Weekly, June 4, 2018, review of Our House, p. 32; June 18, 2018, Pam Lambert, “Close to Home: PW Talks with Louise Candlish,” p. 83.
Washington Post Book World, July 25, 2018, Patrick Anderson, “A Good-hearted Mother Faces the Ultimate Betrayal in the Twisty Novel ‘Our House.'”
Washington Times, August 2, 2018, Claire Hopley, review of Our House.
ONLINE
Book Review Café, https://thebookreviewcafe.com/ (July 2, 2018), review of Our House.
Crime by the Book, http://crimebythebook.com/ (June 12, 2018), review of Our House.
Criminal Element, http://www.criminalelement.com/ (August 7, 2018), Kristin Centorcelli, review of Our House; (August 9, 2018), “Q&A with Louise Candlish, Author of Our House.“
Louise Candlish website, http://www.louisecandlish.com/ (October 17, 2018), author profile.
Louise Candlish was born in Hexham, Northumberland, and grew up in the Midlands town of Northampton. She studied English at University College London and lives in Herne Hill in South London with her husband and daughter. She is the author of twelve novels, including her brand new thriller Our House (UK: Simon & Schuster; US: Berkley), a #1 bestseller in paperback, ebook and audiobook.
Besides books, the things Louise likes best are: coffee; TV; cats and dogs; salted caramel; France (especially the Ile de Re); Italy (especially Sicily); tennis; soup; Vanity Fair magazine; 'Book at Bedtime'; lasagne; heavy metal; 'The Archers'; driving towards the sea (but not into it); anything at the Royal Opera House; white wine; Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (or, failing that, a Starbar).
Book World: A good-hearted mother faces the ultimate betrayal in the twisty novel 'Our House'
Patrick Anderson
The Washington Post. (July 25, 2018): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Patrick Anderson
Our House
By Louise Candlish
Berkley. 404 pp. $26
---
At the start of Louise Candlish's superb thriller "Our House," Fi Lawson, a 40-ish wife and mother, is returning to her comfortable home in South London when she is greeted by an alarming sight: Someone is moving into her house.
Movers are carrying furniture into the house where Fi (short for Fiona) has lived for a decade with her now-estranged husband and their two young sons. She hurries inside and confronts the woman she finds there. This is my house, Fi declares. No, the woman insists, my husband and I have bought it.
Real estate agents, lawyers and police are summoned. Finally the awful truth emerges: The couple has indeed bought the house from Fi's husband Bram (for Abraham) for 2 million pounds. They produce a sales document that features Fi's forged signature, along with that of Bram, whose whereabouts are unknown. Fi's beloved house is no longer hers. Where is she to go? What can she tell her sons? The rest of the novel explains how this disaster came to pass.
Fi is kind and loving. Bram is genial and a devoted father, but overly fond of booze, driving too fast and the temptations of the flesh. Some months earlier, Fi arrived home early and found him entwined with another woman in the playhouse he'd built for their sons in the backyard. She'd forgiven him once before; this time, she threw him out.
Bram blunders on. Driving too fast, he forces another car off the road, leaving its driver and her 10-year-old daughter seriously injured. Bram, whose license had been revoked for earlier speeding offenses, fled the scene. He faces at least 10 years in prison if he's found out.
Enter the villain, who calls himself Mike. He saw the accident and learned who Bram is and what punishment he faces. He demands money from Bram, who protests that he has none. Mike reminds him that he owns (co-owns, actually) a house worth 2 million pounds. He gives Bram a choice: sell the house and hand over the money or go to prison.
Questions abound. Can Bram, having concluded that murdering the blackmailer isn't an option, find a legal way to save the house? Might he and Fi reconcile? Will good-hearted Fi figure out that the charming fellow she's begun dating is a rotter? She's aided in her struggles by her friends in the neighborhood, including one who confesses an affair with Bram. Another tells her: "He's a type, Fi. A bad boy. However hard he tries he can never be fully rehabilitated."
Fi looks back at their courtship: "When we got married I thought I'd done the impossible, settled down with a man who was never going to settle down - until he met me, of course."
For his part, Bram says: "Why did I cheat on the woman I love? The best way that I can explain it was not an addiction or even an itch, but more like the memory of hunger after years of good eating."
Candlish skillfully portrays Fi's friendships with other wives in her South London neighborhood, where the author herself lives with her husband and daughter. The friends discuss the challenges of motherhood, as well as of marriage. Over gin and tonics one evening, one friend admits, "If I had my way, children would stay in primary school forever, and it would never occur to them that we're not always right about absolutely everything."
When Fi starts dating, a friend advises her: "'Hard to get' doesn't exist as a concept anymore. Everyone is easy to get." Fi is neither hard to get nor quick to realize she's being taken for a ride. Few male writers could have captured these women as shrewdly and affectionately as Candlish has.
Candlish has said that "Our House," which deserves to be called a literary thriller, was inspired by a case of property fraud she read about in a London newspaper. We read on, wondering if Fi's house can be saved, if Bram is destined for prison or if a happy ending might somehow emerge. In fact, the ending Candlish has devised is devastating.
Candlish has published 11 previous novels in England, including "The Swimming Pool," "The Second Husband" and "Other People's Secrets," but this is her first to appear in this country. Perhaps its excellence will move an American editor to bring out others. I'd like to read them all.
---
Anderson reviews thrillers and mysteries regularly for The Washington Post.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Anderson, Patrick. "Book World: A good-hearted mother faces the ultimate betrayal in the twisty novel 'Our House'." Washington Post, 25 July 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A547690759/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=466a31d6. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A547690759
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Print Marked Items
Close to Home: PW TALKS WITH
LOUISE CANDLISH
Pam Lambert
Publishers Weekly.
265.25 (June 18, 2018): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
In Candlish's domestic thriller Our House (Berkley, Aug.), Fi Lawson returns to her family's South London
townhouse one day to discover that her estranged husband has stolen it out from under her.
What inspired this novel?
I read an article in the Daily Mail a few years ago about a woman who had almost been the victim of
property fraud, in a not dissimilar scenario to the one that I use in the book. And it just struck me as the
most fantastic crime for a novel. I wanted to write about a crime that I'd never read about in fiction before.
Could someone actually steal a house as easily as in the book?
I made the criminals jump through more hoops in the novel than you would have to in reality. Here in the
U.K., you can buy a house without meeting your lawyer, you can do it all online, which sounds
extraordinary but is true. So the book's been described as a how-to guide to steal a house, but hopefully no
one will use it for that purpose.
Why does the idea of home have such a high emotional resonance right now?
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Partly because of the political climate and the uncertainty of the outside world, we're all kind of looking
inward, setting such emotional store in our domestic life. But the other reason is that our houses have gone
up in value so much that they've almost taken on a dangerous kind of central role in a family. In so many
situations now, I think a family home is making the decisions for families rather than the people.
Why did you decide to have Fi tell a large chunk of the story via a podcast?
I'm a big fan of the spoken word generally, because there's that kind of intimacy and it's about persuasion
and trust in a way that's very direct and different from the written word, which felt absolutely right for Fi.
And then there are the tweets from listeners. I thought that Fi's account might be frustrating to the reader,
especially as she knows so much less than the reader does, so I wanted to give the reader a voice for some
of the comments they might be making about Fi.
You've spoken of Agatha Christie's influence on your work. Do you see any shadow of her here?
I suppose if there's any Christie influence it's reflected in my obsession with the plotting. She always put
plot before anything else, and I think that's what I've done in this book as well.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Lambert, Pam. "Close to Home: PW TALKS WITH LOUISE CANDLISH." Publishers Weekly, 18 June
2018, p. 83. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A544712407/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e975eb4f. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
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Candlish, Louise: OUR HOUSE
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Candlish, Louise OUR HOUSE Berkley (Adult Fiction) $26.00 8, 7 ISBN: 978-0-451-48911-1
When a woman discovers strangers moving into her London home, her estranged husband and sons
nowhere to be seen, it's only the beginning of the nightmare that will upend her life.
Fiona "Fi" Lawson loves her house in the fictional posh Alder Rise neighborhood almost as much as she
loves her picture-perfect family: husband Bram and adorably rambunctious sons Harry and Leo. Candlish
(The Swimming Pool, 2016, etc.) digs deep for both suspense and compassion but comes up empty with Fi,
whose almost stubborn cluelessness about the state of her marriage (Bram is a serial adulterer, among other
things) and, later, her insistence on being a victim (so much so that she goes on a podcast called The
Victim) make her a sour protagonist at best. When Fi catches Bram having sex with someone else in the
children's garden playhouse, she throws him out but decides to try a custody arrangement known as a bird's
nest, where the children stay in the family home and the parents alternate living there and at a newly
acquired flat. While the setup seems great on paper, it doesn't take into account the depths of Bram's lies--
the yearlong driving ban he's hidden from Fi soon becomes the least of his concerns--and the lengths he'll
go to save himself. With the narrative confusingly split into sections from Fi's podcast segment, a Word
document that's allegedly Bram's suicide note, and perspectives from both spouses, it's difficult for readers
to keep a firm grip on the timeline and to truly care as Bram enters into an unnecessarily complicated
blackmail scheme and Fi remains annoyingly oblivious on all fronts even when Bram disappears, having
sold the Alder Rise home without her knowledge.
In a novel concerned with connection and trust, Candlish fails to connect with readers on either level,
serving up characters so wrapped in their own problems that "family" is merely a word to them.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Candlish, Louise: OUR HOUSE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543008996/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2b1f6660.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
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Our House
Publishers Weekly.
265.23 (June 4, 2018): p32+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Our House
Louise Candlish. Berkley, $26 (416p) ISBN 978-0-451-48911-1
British author Candlish makes her U.S. debut with an artfully plotted, affecting page-turner. Fiona Lawson
gets the shock of her life when she returns from a brief getaway to the beloved London townhouse where
she alternates custody with her estranged husband, Bram, of their two children: another family seems to be
moving in. Bram has apparently sold the home out from under her and the kids--and vanished, along with
the 2 million [pounds sterling] payday. Even more devastating betrayals await the doughty Fi. Alternating
narratives--one Fi's, the other Bram's--raise the tension. In a particularly inspired move, much of Fi's
account comes via her emotionally raw tale on a true crime podcast, The Victim, with tweets from the
audience serving as a kind of Greek chorus. Movingly chronicling the decline of a marriage that once
looked as solid as the couple's stately red-brick residence, Candlish manages to stash a couple of trump
cards, setting up a truly killer climax. American fans of domestic suspense will want to see more from this
talented author. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents/ICM Partners. (Aug.)'
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Our House." Publishers Weekly, 4 June 2018, p. 32+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A542242834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=18927573.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A542242834
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Our House: Louise Candlish
The Bookseller.
.5812 (Sept. 14, 2018): p9.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Bookseller Media Limited
http://www.thebookseller.com
Full Text:
Our House
Louise Candlish
Simon & Schuster, 7.99 [pounds sterling], 9781471168062
Our House underscores how even good writers need a little luck--and promotion. Louise Candlish has been
in the charts wilderness for a while: 2007's Since I Don't Have You (Sphere) was a smash, hitting a high of
25th place in the charts, but she has not really troubled the bestseller lists since, even when her domestic
novels moved into more noirish territory. For example, her previous effort, The Swimming Pool (Penguin),
has sold 17,000 units through the TCM since 2016. Yet a Waterstones Thriller of the Month nod in
September (and a new publisher) has seen her return to the Top 50, with her best weekly volume total in 11
years.
Data
The bestseller charts 18
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Our House: Louise Candlish." The Bookseller, 14 Sept. 2018, p. 9. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A554493986/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c64606ba.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A554493986
Review: Our House by Louise Candlish
BY KRISTIN CENTORCELLI
August 7, 2018
Our House
Louise Candlish
August 7, 2018
Our House by internationally acclaimed author Louise Candlish is a disturbing and addictive novel of domestic suspense where secrets kept hidden from spouses cause shocking surprises that hit home.
Louise Candlish’s latest domestic suspense novel, Our House, has had a ton of buzz surrounding it, so I couldn’t wait to dive in. Londoner Fiona “Fi” Lawson’s husband, Bram, has cheated on her one too many times, and she finally decides to call it quits. Wanting to negate the impact on their two young boys as much as possible, she and Bram decide on a “bird’s nest” option. This isn’t something I’d ever attempt, but hey, to each their own, right? They decide to keep their beautiful home in a very sought-after neighborhood and take turns living there with the boys while alternately using a small flat that they come to call “Baby Deco” due to the art deco look of the building. It actually seems to work out pretty well. The boys barely register a blip on their existence, and Fi—though struggling with the aftermath of infidelity and the breakup of her marriage—is starting to look forward instead of lingering in the past.
Until…
She must be mistaken, but it looks exactly as if someone is moving into her house.
The van is parked halfway down Trinity Avenue, its square mouth agape, a large piece of furniture sliding down the ribbed metal tongue. Fi watches, squinting into the buttery sunlight—rare for the time of year, a gift—as the object is borne shoulder high by two men through the gate and down the path.
My gate. My path.
No, that’s illogical; of course it can’t be her house. It must be the Reeces’, two down from hers; they put their place on the market in the autumn and no one is quite sure whether a sale has gone through. The houses on this side of Trinity Avenue are all built the same—redbrick double-fronted Edwardians in pairs, their owners united in a preference for front doors painted black—and everyone agrees it’s easy to miscount.
Can you imagine coming home and finding someone moving into your house? Of course, Fi is in shock, and with the help of the new homeowners (as much as they can—I can imagine how horrid it would be to be the ones thinking they bought a house on the up and up and finding out otherwise), Fi attempts to find out what has happened.
Bram, it seems, is in the wind. Fi can’t find him, and he’s left the kids with his mother after telling them some ridiculous cover story. Fi is stumped. After all, Bram is a cheater, but could he actually do something this horrible to his wife and kids?
Of course, nothing is simple, and Candlish drops readers into a truly dark rabbit hole of blackmail and deception, the lengths that some will go to in order to protect themselves, and the lies we tell those we love the most.
The narrative is split between Fi’s recording of her story for a podcast called The Victim, her and Bram’s third-person narratives, and a Word document that seems to be Bram’s confessional. The split narrative does require you to pay attention, but those that do will be rewarded. It’s a type of storytelling that could have been confusing in lesser hands, but Candlish handles it like the pro she is, and it expertly highlights the many near misses and misunderstandings that can so often occur between even the most loving and healthy of couples.
I predict that some readers might label Fi as cold while finding Bram—despite his many (so, so many) transgressions—sympathetic. Don’t fall into this trap! To me, Fi was a breath of fresh air. She had to make some pretty hard decisions, even at the expense of her own emotional wellbeing, in order to not impact her children’s lives, and if she bears her pain with stoicism and pragmatism instead of dissolving into puddles of tears (which, personally, I totally would have), it’s absolutely her right and doesn’t make her any less sympathetic. That said, Bram is actually sympathetic. He fully recognizes that the spiral his life has taken is completely due to his own idiotic, selfish choices. By the time the book wraps up, he’s a pitiful, tragic shadow of his former self—a golden boy whose brash hubris never got him into more trouble than he could handle until now.
No one comes out on top here. Not really. The ending isn’t nihilistic, but it may leave readers with a sense of melancholy that will linger. This thoughtful, sophisticated, and suspenseful read is well worth your time.
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Q&A with Louise Candlish, Author of Our House
BY LOUISE CANDLISH
August 9, 2018
In Louise Candlish’s new novel, Our House, protagonist Fiona Lawson returns to her posh suburban London home on a Friday morning in January only to find a curious scene. A moving van is parked outside. And inside? Another family, eager to finish moving in and start setting up their new home. Except, Fiona insists, she didn’t sell the house.
“This was always a cautionary tale,” Candlish says of the book. A bestselling author in the U.K., Candlish makes her U.S. debut with Our House on Aug. 7. As London property values climb ever higher, Candlish says she worries that people think of their houses more as multimillion-dollar assets to be cashed in and less as, well, homes. And when big money is involved, shady criminals can’t be far behind.
Our House finds Fiona Lawson in such a trap. She and her husband, Bram, have owned their home on Trinity Avenue for years, and its skyrocketing value has made them accidental millionaires. But their lives are in transition. After catching Bram with another woman in their kids’ backyard playhouse, Fiona wants to separate. But the housing market and the kids nudge the couple into a unique arrangement: they rent a nearby apartment and trade off nights at the house with the children.
Bram, however, is keeping secrets of his own, and the betrayal that began in the playhouse soon moves into the real house. Told from both Fiona’s point of view—via an appearance on a true crime podcast called The Victim—and Bram’s perspective, Our House is a twisty slice of domestic noir spiked with contemporary cybercrime.
Candlish, who lives in South London (a “less fashionable and a bit more edgy” part of the city than Trinity Avenue, she says), recently answered questions about her inspiration for the book, “Friday afternoon fraud,” and her favorite podcasts. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
As you began writing, what came first: the crime or the characters? What inspired the book?
It was the crime that definitely came first. The characters grew up around it. I was really interested in a couple of things that have to do with property in the U.K. and the fact the whole population seems to have become property obsessed. Properties have become overvalued, and people have become these accidental millionaires living in fairly average houses. At the same time, a whole terrible industry of property fraud has grown up. I really wanted to write about a crime that I hadn’t read about before in fiction, and I’d read about one instance in particular of criminals trying to steal someone’s house. They were a kind of faceless criminal gang, but I thought it would be far more interesting a novel if the criminal was someone who the victim actually knew. And then I started to think of a married couple—a separating couple—and the circumstances that would put them in a position where one of them was vulnerable to the other’s criminal activities.
As you researched property crime, were you surprised at how achievable a scheme like this is?
I was shocked. First of all, as soon as I identified this as crime, I wanted to put it at the heart of my story. So I read about it as much as I could. It was about a couple years ago when I started to research and write, and there wasn’t a whole lot of official research and guidelines. Those have come out more recently. At the end of last year—long after I’d finished my final draft—the Land Registry, which is the government arm that registers all property sales here, and the Law Society, which is the major legal body, collaborated on some extensive guidelines for property lawyers. Those guidelines are fascinating and would have been useful had they been available when I was writing.
I was pulling all the news stories, looking at statistics, and looking at the data, and I was absolutely shocked at how quickly property crime is taking off. Although, it shouldn’t be surprising. Property is a very high-value asset, and wherever you have high-value assets, you’re going to attract the attention of criminals who want to get their hands on it. Here, property-related cybercrimes are called “Friday afternoon fraud” because most property purchases tend to close on Fridays. The major crime is when criminals get the buyer to transfer their payment to the criminal account—and it’s now the biggest area of cybercrime in the legal sector. I was just blown away; I thought I had discovered something quite niche and minor, and it turns out it’s huge.
When people talk about homes, they tend to talk about big ideas: family, comfort, belonging. Apart from the actual taking of Fiona’s house, there’s a thread of housing anxiety running through the book—anxiety about property values, parking, neighbors, downsizing, selling, and buying. Can you talk a little about why the characters in Our House think and talk about their homes in these terms?
That was what I was interested in exploring. To me, this was always a cautionary tale. It’s possibly a little bit exaggerated, but not much so when I think about the conversations I eavesdrop on in cafes and the conversations my friends have.
In the last 20 years in London, homes have been discussed as property rather than in terms of “home,” and one of the reasons I wanted to write Our House is that I felt worried. We’ve very quickly and quite dangerously started to make decisions based on what a house is worth rather than other things, like “Should we move because it’s good for the children,” or “Should I move because I’ve had a great job offer.” All the decisions seem to center on how much the house is worth and whether it’s the optimum time to cash in this asset. There’s a line early in the book where Fiona says that if she had her time again, she’d concentrate a lot less on house and more on the people in it, and that’s my message in a nutshell. I think we’re all in danger of getting to the end of our lives and finding we spent a vast majority of it looking at house prices on property websites rather than reading Anna Karenina.
Social media and podcasts have become popular forums for working out true crime tales. Why did you decide to situate the narrative in these media?
Without giving away any spoilers, Fiona needed a forum for telling her story that would reach a lot of people quite quickly and be quite persuasive. From a writer’s point of view, I wanted to try something different. But at the same time, I didn’t want it to just be fun for me to experiment. I wanted it to be integral to the plot. It seemed that her doing an audio interview was the perfect way for her to tell her story; she’s in control of it, and she knows who the audience is because she used to be a member of the audience listening to this podcast called The Victim. It’s about gaining the trust of the audience and getting intimate. I listen to a lot of audio, and I always feel like I have such a direct and personal relationship with the speaker. I thought it would be perfect for Fiona’s story because, again, not to use spoilers, she has an agenda of her own.
Do you have any favorite podcasts?
Like everyone else, I love Serial. I remember the whole fever that gripped us all. I do love You Must Remember This, the podcast about old Hollywood. I think it’s so fantastic, and it has that very intimate, conversational tone I find to be very beguiling. I love radio plays. I listen to audiobooks a lot, but I listen to dramatizations of books and radio plays, usually in the dead of night when I have insomnia.
Check out our new true crime podcast, Case Closed!
The shifting perspectives you use are interesting: both Fiona and Bram are unreliable and with their own agendas. How did you decide on this approach? Was it apparent from the beginning, or did it assert itself while you were writing?
The whole novel was very plotted and deliberate and considered. I would say that I don’t consider Bram unreliable at all. He’s absolutely telling the truth as he sees it. He’s not withholding anything. Fiona is obviously less reliable. I was also very keen on having her tell the truth pretty much 99.9 percent of the time, so she tells a couple little white lies in her account on the podcast but nothing significant. What she’s doing is withholding important stuff. So she’s unreliable in that respect. But both of them are actually telling the truth as they say it.
Though the story belongs to Fiona, Bram, the charming villain that he is, frequently takes over the narrative. In the end, I couldn’t help but have some sympathy for him. Did you find your own feelings for the characters changing as you wrote?
Yes, certainly. I also became charmed by Bram and started to enjoy writing his sections more than I enjoyed writing Fiona’s. I wasn’t really expecting that. But there was a practical element worth mentioning. My editor at Berkley, Danielle, was very thorough in her editing of Bram the character. He was a little nastier, a little more of a philanderer, and a little less sympathetic when she first got her hands on him. Between us, we tempered him so it would be possible to see how he could be charming. He’s very candid and very honest, and I think that’s quite likable.
In the last 20 years in London, homes have been discussed as property rather than in terms of “home,” and one of the reasons I wanted to write Our House is that I felt worried.
The other thing about Bram that caused me to become more and more sympathetic as I wrote was uncovering these quite complex links between mental health and crime. He’s not acting the way he’s acting as a lifestyle choice; he’s really suffering. There’s a lot of despair, and he’s making decisions a sane and steady person wouldn’t make and allowing them to lead into the next bad decision. My original title was The Victim. Fiona’s the real victim, but I always felt Bram was a victim in his own way as well. It was never a black-and-white situation at all.
Our House has shades of noir, particularly the circumstances around Bram’s various misdeeds, and a sort of reverse-Agatha Christie kind of plotting—less of a whodunit and more of a why/how-dunnit. Which other crime/mystery authors/directors/artists influence you? Any particular favorites?
Agatha Christie would be my favorite. While I was not directly stealing from her, I had read everything she’d written in a very formative time in my life (my early teens), and I’ve always enjoyed the puzzle of a crime or mystery story. I definitely got that from her.
In terms of characters, when I was writing this book, I watched a whole sort of season of Barbara Stanwyck movies, and I’m sure an element of those have come through. Double Indemnity and those movies—where a simple crime always led to a crime that covers up a crime that covers up the crime before—influenced my writing.
Are you at work on your next book?
I am. I’m just finishing it, or I believe I’m just finishing it, but no doubt it will come back to me for a few more drafts. It’s another one I would describe as suburban noir. It’s about a street not unlike Trinity Avenue, where a neighbor has moved in and proved himself to be so ghastly and unpleasant and uncooperative with the residents that they soon find themselves accused of plotting to kill him. I’ve really enjoyed it. I tried to keep it simpler than Our House, which kind of broke my brain a bit, it was so complex. But it’s probably not that simple.
Read Kristin Centorcelli’s review of Our House!
Louise Candlish
Louise Candlish attended University College London and worked as an editor in art publishing and as a copywriter before becoming a novelist. She lives with her husband and daughter.
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Today I’m thrilled to share my review for Our House by Louise Candlish, and what a fabulous book this one turned out to be, before I share my review here’s the book description to whet your appetite……
On a bright morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought on Trinity Avenue. Nothing strange about that. Except it’s your house. And you didn’t sell it.
FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.
When Fi Lawson arrives home to find strangers moving into her house, she is plunged into terror and confusion. She and her husband Bram have owned their home on Trinity Avenue for years and have no intention of selling. How can this other family possibly think the house is theirs? And why has Bram disappeared when she needs him most?
FOR RICHER, FOR POORER.
Bram has made a catastrophic mistake and now he is paying. Unable to see his wife, his children or his home, he has nothing left but to settle scores. As the nightmare takes grip, both Bram and Fi try to make sense of the events that led to a devastating crime. What has he hidden from her – and what has she hidden from him? And will either survive the chilling truth – that there are far worse things you can lose than your house?
TILL DEATH US DO PART.
IMG_3605This is the first book I have read by Louise Candlish and although it had a jaw dropping opening, I did have reservations as I found the constant change of narrative in the beginning some what confusing to say the least, but I’m so glad I persevered, what a compelling and twisted tale this turned out to be. We live in a world where our home is often a status symbol, we invest in it both financially and emotionally, we would do anything to protect our “nest egg” but Imagine coming home from work to find your house has been sold and your husband has disappeared? It would be your worse nightmare right? this is pretty much the premise of Our House. You may have misgivings about reading a novel based on a property, but believe me when I say “this book takes domestic noir to a new and exciting level”
Told from the POV of Fi and Bram their narrative makes for an compelling read, as it explains the six months leading up to the house being sold, it’s a marriage shrouded in lies and deception, and turmoil. The old adage “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive.” sums this book up perfectly. Once I got used to the narrative I thought the author made a fantastic job in conveying her characters story, Fi’s story is told via a podcast called The Victim, and Bram’s side is told through word documents, as the reader you are privy to both sides of the story, which is more than can be said for poor Fi who is totally in the dark regarding events that led to her husband’s disappearance and her home being sold.
As the plot unfolds Fi and Bram’s story becomes darker and more uncomfortable to read, as a spectator on the side lines you see the characters mental health unravel before your very eyes. You sense Fi’s fear and confusion, Bram’s panic as the lies mount up. Both characters had traits that I found very unlikable, and I certainly wanted to give Bram a good shake every time he made a wrong decision. Fi and Bram make for unreliable narrators and believe me when I say they “bring a whole new meaning to the word dysfunctional” but never the less they are brilliantly depicted and fit the story perfectly.
When I began reading Our House I did have a couple of moments where I thought “hmmm really?” It did seem a bit far-fetched, but the more I read I thought it actually made for a very credible tale, which made this book all the more disturbing. As each chapter ends the sense of foreboding intensifies, you know something terrible is looming for the couple, but as to the who? why? what? The author manages to keep the reader in suspense to the last few pages. Louise Candlish manages to trick the reader at every deviously plotted turn. Despite guessing a couple of the twists there was one that gave me a “jaw dropping, did I really just read that?” moment which was superbly executed. I’m sure Our House will be one of the most talked about books of the year, and I can see why, it’s highly original, topical, and one that will cause debate, would I recommend it? Most definitely.
Print Length: 449 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (5 April 2018)
Buying links:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B072M5S9XH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
https://www.amazon.com/Our-House-Louise-Candlish/dp/045148911X
By Claire Hopley - - Thursday, August 2, 2018
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
OUR HOUSE
By Louise Candlish
Berkley, $26, 416 pages
Apart from not being able to pay the mortgage, a homeowner’s worst nightmare has to be to come home and find someone else is moving into the house.
Your furniture has gone. So have your spouse and kids. And the woman telling the movers where to put stuff is a hundred percent sure that she and her husband have just bought the property. It turns out they are right, so no surprise that Fiona Lawson, who has this experience, is utterly devastated.
What has happened? Her seriously unreliable husband Bram has sold the house, parked the children with his mother and done a runner. But Fiona — Fi — the joint owner doesn’t know any of this, and certainly has signed no sale agreement. So how has Bram contrived to sell it, and why?
The “why” is the subject of “Our House,” and its cleverly orchestrated exposition by Louise Candlish makes enthralling reading, not least because it gives equal to time to both Bram and Fi.
Fi tells her story on The Victim, a website devoted to victims’ tales of their own undoing, and is, incidentally, compulsive reading for Fi and her neighbors in an up-and-coming — and expensive — London suburb.
Bram’s story alternates with Fi’s Victim account. It begins, “Let me remove any doubt straightaway and tell you that this is a suicide note. By the time you read this, I’ll have done it. Break the news gently please. I may be a monster, but I am still a father and there are two boys who’ll be sorry to lose me, who’ll have reason to remember me more kindly. Maybe even their mother too, a one-in-a million woman whose life must be a nightmare now, thanks to me. And whom may I say for the record, I have never stopped loving.”
Bram’s terse introduction comes 13 pages into “Our House,” and by this point the reader knows about Fi’s discovery of strangers moving into her house, and will have read the beginning of her story on The Victim.
Among other things this reveals that she and Bram have separated. It also displays her socially responsible conviction that by sharing her experience on The Victim she may alert others to the potential for property fraud, or she may trigger a memory that will lead to Bram’s discovery.
Like a driver putting the key in the ignition and a foot on the accelerator of a powerful car, Louise Candlish’s swift exposition of the plot and its emotional underpinning speeds away with her readers, and keeps them clinging to their seats, eager to learn more about why and how Bram managed the heist.
These and other questions also occur to a chorus of readers of The Victim. Their Internet comments at the end of Fi’s chapters express thoughts that may have also occurred to readers. For example, when Fi describes the couple who came asking for a quick look round because they’d missed the open house, one Internet commentator suggests that Fi was dumb not to have twigged that something was wrong.
But another points out that a nearby house was actually for sale, and Fi’s assumption that the inquirers were actually looking for that one is reasonable. A third chimes in to agree and note, “She’s really brave to admit all this now.”
This is true. And she is not only brave, she is also hard-working: She has a demanding job, and she is a good — even obsessive — housekeeper and an excellent mother. As a wife she has cut Bram a lot of slack, and when she decides they must separate, most readers will agree she has good cause. “She should have taken him to the cleaners then and there,” is one Internet response.
Bram notes that at times he and the boys have called Fi “Fee Fi Fo Fum” after the fairy tale giant who announces he “smells the blood of an Englishman.” It was affectionate, he says, but “It became less so on my part once I realized that nine times out of ten the Englishman’s blood was mine.”
Such wry comments are a hallmark of Bram’s suicide note. Both these and his openness about the derelictions that lead to the house-selling scheme make him an oddly sympathetic character, more so than Fi who is bit of a Mrs. Goody Two Shoes. Here is yet another case of the villain being more attractive than the heroine.
Louise Candlish does not capture Bram’s and Fi’s differences in outlook and personality by giving them different voices; nor do their voices differ much from the narrator’s. Nonetheless the intricate plotting and clever story-telling ensure that few readers will protest too strongly about this flaw in what is otherwise an accomplished and highly readable novel.
• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.
THE CBTB BLOG
One girl's ongoing investigation of the crime fiction genre.
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BOOK REVIEW: OUR HOUSE BY LOUISE CANDLISH
June 12, 2018
OUR HOUSE by Louise Candlish
Berkley; 8/7/18
CBTB Rating: 4.5/5
The Verdict: Page-turning, addictive suspense with a fresh angle
The way I see it, the ever-growing list of new domestic suspense novels is a two-sided coin for us readers. On the one hand, who doesn’t love a great domestic thriller? It’s such fun to see what new suspense novels we can add to our “anticipated reads” lists. But on the other hand… how on earth are you going to separate the great from the so-so? It can feel like picking up a new domestic suspense novel is a bit of a gamble—but not in the case of Louise Candlish’s OUR HOUSE. Fresh, fun, and engrossing, OUR HOUSE is a new take on domestic suspense: a binge-worthy story of secrets in a marriage that will take readers down a totally unexpected path. Come to OUR HOUSE for its gorgeous packaging; stay for its inventive storytelling structure and page-turning reading experience. OUR HOUSE is a little bit twisty, a touch dramatic, and a whole lot of suspense reading fun. It’s hard to describe this book as anything but propulsive—from its first page to its very shocking last, I was hooked on Candlish’s inventive story of betrayal, guilt, and relationships gone very wrong.
Plot Summary:
There's nothing unusual about a new family moving in at 91 Trinity Avenue. Except it's her house. And she didn't sell it.
When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern coparenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.
Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses.
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There are few things better than a domestic thriller that manages to root itself firmly in the realm of what’s possible, while also managing to inject its story with just enough drama to make it binge-worthy. In her outstanding OUR HOUSE, Louise Candlish walks this fine line effortlessly. OUR HOUSE begins with a premise that is perhaps most terrifying for its plausibility: a woman returns home one day to discover that her husband (from whom she is now separated) has disappeared, taking her sons with him. To make matters worse, it appears that her husband has sold off their home - the safe space in which they’ve raised a family and made a life together - without her permission. Candlish doesn’t kick off her suspense novel with violence or gore, nor does she try to trick readers with smoke and mirrors. We meet protagonist Fiona on the worst day of her life, and are confronted with the realities of her situation even within the book’s first few pages. Candlish puts readers right in the heart of the action right away, and it’s an effective technique—I found myself instantly hooked by the myriad questions Fiona’s predicament raises. Has Bram really done what she suspects he has? How could he have pulled this feat off without her knowledge? Where is Bram, and where are Fiona’s sons? Readers experience in real time the utter confusion and sheer panic of a woman whose life has been shattered in the amount of time it takes to pull into her own driveway. Talk about a gripping opener.
The beginning of OUR HOUSE might be good, but as the book progresses, it gets even better. Through multiple narratives, Candlish deftly addresses the book’s most pressing questions; readers move between Fiona’s past, Bram’s past, and Fiona’s current reflection on the past with surprising ease. This might sound like a lot for one book to juggle, but never fear - Candlish balances these various threads effortlessly, and the story is all the stronger for their intersections. Fiona’s “past” storyline is perhaps the most straightforward, though no less compelling; we follow Fiona as she discovers her husband's betrayal and deals with its fallout. Bram’s “past” is arguably the most emotionally weighty; his “past” is told to readers through an alleged suicide note he has left for his family, detailing the circumstances that led to his earth-shattering betrayal of those he loved most. And then there’s Fiona’s reflection on her past, my personal favorite element of the puzzle that is OUR HOUSE. CBTB readers will know how much I love a good true crime podcast, and Candlish has made what I (a very biased true crime fan!) consider the fantastic choice to incorporate this format of true-crime storytelling into her modern crime fiction novel.
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In the present day, Fiona has become the newest participant on a podcast called “The Victim”—a true crime podcast that explores the experiences of victims of crime, as told in their own words. Interspersed throughout the story, readers will be given “transcripts” of Fiona’s appearance on The Victim, complete with fictional social media responses to her appearance. This is every bit as immersive a storytelling tool as it sounds. Candlish’s willingness to step outside her characters and imagine how an “audience” listening to their story on a podcast might respond to them adds another layer of complexity to this plot, but it’s such a welcome one. Neither Fiona nor Bram are the most endearing of characters, and I loved Candlish’s ability to skewer her own characters through these fictional social media responses. It’s a bit like crime writing inception—an author writing about how a fictional audience might respond to the fictional characters she’s created—but Candlish doesn’t just pull it off, she hits it out of the park. Between the “podcast,” Bram’s suicide note, and the glimpses we’re given into Fiona’s actual experiences as they happened, Candlish crafts a tapestry of lies and deception that make for utterly unputdownable reading material. It’s not quite the Rashomon effect, but it’s close: with so many varying perspectives on the “truth” put forth, truth begins to feel subjective, and readers will relish every opportunity to puzzle together who’s being honest - and who isn’t.
Last but certainly not least, it’s worth a moment of consideration that Candlish puts an actual house - a physical piece of property - at the center of her domestic suspense novel. Sure, there are absolutely family secrets and interpersonal betrayals in this story as well, but it was an interesting and notable choice to me that Candlish wanted to put a material object at the heart of her story. For Fiona and Bram, their home in the posh neighborhood of Alder Rise is a physical representation of the life they’ve built together and the status they, as a couple, have secured for themselves. Granted, I’m sure it could be said of any family that their home is central to their life—but I couldn’t help but think that perhaps Candlish made this decision to make a certain point. Status symbols - whether property, fancy clothes, or the picture-perfect image of our lives that we project into the world - are ultimately disposable, as Fiona comes to find out. When all the exterior shininess is stripped away, what is Fiona left with? As it turns out, the foundation of her marriage was rotten, and no lavish home could fix that.
Louise Candlish’s OUR HOUSE is a stunner of a summer suspense novel. I will caution readers that this book is not one that relies on instant, earth-shattering twists; do be patient with this book, but it will have reveals a plenty in store for you. There’s also a healthy dose of drama here, but it is drama of the best kind: addictive, binge-worthy, purely entertaining drama. And last but certainly not least, I would be remiss if I didn’t wrap this interview up by saying: Louise Candlish, you may have sent me into a fit of some strange blend of frustration, disbelief, and just-plain-shocked laughter with that ending. (If you think that’s a cliffhanger, wait until you read OUR HOUSE.)
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions my own.
BOOK DETAILS:
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Berkley (August 7, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 045148911X
ISBN-13: 978-0451489111
Crime by the Book is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way affects my opinion of the above book.