"Family feuds, unlikely bonds, rebuilding a life through breaking a house, this outstanding debut is a darkly comic, emotionally stirring joy."
Simmering with caustic one-liners and searing observations, Colleen Hubbard’s Housebreaking debut is a read-in-one-sitting triumph. Laying bare the worst and best of humanity — small town small-mindedness, family greed, forming fresh bonds, and finding a way to rebuild — its depth creeps up to leave a formidable impression.
Del is something of a drifter, a lost soul without purpose, and now she has no job, and no place to live. As a result, Del decides to return to her New England hometown to claim her deceased parents’ house, a house her Uncle Chuck and cousins want knock down for development.
In the words of her mother’s old friend, 74-year-old Eleanor, “I know what your mother would say to old Chuckie Small Balls…She’d tell him to fuck himself.” Which is exactly what Del does, in her own way. She agrees to sell the land, but it won’t be transferred for them to develop until she’s dismantled her house and moved it across a frozen pond.
As Del disassembles the house, an unlikely bunch of allies assemble around her. Memories are unearthed, truths are revealed, and a new connection is made in a town packed with people who’ve let her down, culminating in a glowing sense that it might be possible to break the pain of the past and move on.
This novel is cleverly magical — it’ll make you laugh out loud while breaking, melting and mending your heart.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
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 unravelling - 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.
Housebreaking features in the following genres: General Fiction, Debut Books of the Month, Debuts, Family Drama, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Housebreaking is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
Housebreaking was written by Colleen Hubbard and published by Corsair an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
Housebreaking has 368 pages
£8.99
