Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard

 

Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard.

Published 11th August 2022 by Corsair.

From the cover of the book:

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.

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Twenty-four year old Del has no wish to return to her small Maine hometown, but fate might just have thrown her a curve-ball. Sacked from her job for a major indiscretion, and without a roof over her head now her gay room-mate, and only friend, Tym wants to move in his latest boyfriend, she does not have a lot of choices. So when her detested uncle declares he wants to buy her decrepit old family home so he can develop the site, she finds herself on a bus heading back to the place that only holds bad memories for her.

The house is in a bad state, but Del realises that it actually does elicit some good recollections after all, even if they all relate to the time before the scandal that led to her parents' divorce. It is not quite as easy to give this up as she thought, even if she does need the money, especially as it was the only thing her mother inherited from her parents - something that still rankles her detestable uncle even though he was bequeathed all the land around it. Instead, she decides she will sell the site, but dismantle the house by herself and move it to the other side of the nearby pond, as an act of insurrection.

The following months see Del tearing her old home apart, and moving it piece by piece across the surface of the frozen pond, during a harsh New England winter. No one believes she will complete the task she has set herself, most of all her unlikeable family. But as the weeks go by it becomes much more than a way to get back at them for the hurt she has kept hidden within. As the house comes down, Del begins to make peace with the bad memories contained in its very walls, and finds a way to move on with her life.

This is just the kind of quiet book that I adore. One that delves into the nitty-gritty of real life, human connection, and the experiences that shape us into the people we become. Colleen Hubbard does this in spades in this story, but she also takes you beyond that into the deliciously poignant country of using the past to make a positive change.

Del is a spiky character who has thrown up walls around herself to keep those pesky emotions at bay. No spoilers in this review, but she has had a lot to deal with in the past, and her life has shrunk to an existence that revolves around her room-mate Tym, who has taken her under his wing after the death of her father. This is a place she would have stayed too, despite her youth, until destiny throws a spanner into the works. I wanted to give her a great big hug right from the beginning of the story - not that she would have let me!

There are a lot of painful scenes in this story, as Del works through the hurt she has carried for much of her life, and you feel every ounce of the hard graft she has to perform both physically and emotionally to get to the place she does at the end. I very much enjoyed how her relationship changes with many of the characters that Hubbard weaves throughout the story, particularly as the determination of this friendless, angry young woman touches the lives of those around her. A special mention goes to Tym, who is carrying the weight of hefty sorrows of his own - ones that really anchor this book to the time in which it is set; and also to Billy, Eleanor, Greg and Jeanne. It was lovely to be with them as they each got to really know Del, each other, and themselves.

If you are partial to the tender, emotionally rewarding work of authors like Elizabeth Strout then you will love this book, because Hubbard knows exactly how to make you feel for her characters in the same way. This book made my heart ache, but it also made me laugh, and the uplifting ending is to die for. I did not want to let the characters go at the end, which is the highest praise I can give to any author's work. This is an impressive debut and I look forward to more from Colleen Hubbard.

Housebreaking is available to buy now in hardcover and ebook formats now.

Thank you to Corsair for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review. 

About the author:

A native of New England, Colleen Hubbard now lives in the U.K. with her family. She wrote her debut novel, Housebreaking, while on maternity leave from her job with the NHS. She graduated from the University of East Anglia's MA program in creative writing, where she earned the Head of School Prize with a distinction.