In My House - Softcover

Hourston, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571316670 ISBN 13: 9780571316670

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2015

Synopsis

In the queue for the toilets at Gatwick, a teenage girl catches 57-year-old Margaret Benson's eye in the mirror and mouths the world help. Margaret's reaction leads to the dramatic rescue of the teenager from her trafficker and Margaret becomes a hero. But when the story gets picked up by the papers, Margaret is panicked by the publicity, as well as the strange phone calls she begins to receive. Meanwhile Anja makes contact. She wants to thank her rescuer, but she also quickly inserts herself into Margaret's lonely life. As their friendship develops, so do questions: who is Margaret hiding from, and what are Anja's true motives? And what is the cost of living a lie?

About this title

Review:

This stunningly accomplished first novel whips along like a thriller, and presents the reader with one more dilemma after another ... A must for the intelligent book group. (Kate Saunders, The Times)

The most original, well-observed and well-sustained first novel I've read in a long time. Alex Hourston has a really cool, unnerving way with words. It's crammed full of small, terrifyingly honest details which you feel ought to be in novels but rarely are. I loved it! (Julie Myerson)

Involving and original ... Hourston resolutely avoids the predictable, skilfully throwing the reader off-balance and creating a compelling sense of unease that shimmers unsettlingly beneath the ordinary lives she explores ... a strikingly promising debut. Caustically perceptive, wryly funny, occasionally devastatingly tender, Maggie Benson is a terrific protagonist; like all the most satisfactory characters in fiction, she is both infuriatingly contradictory and entirely plausible. (Guardian)

What would you do if you were in a toilet queue at Gatwick and someone mouthed the word, 'help'? So starts Hourston's intriguing debut novel before grabbing your hand and running headlong to its unsettling finale. (Stylist)

'Unsettling ... with a very persuasive thread of menace.' (Observer)

'An unsettling story about the friendship between a lonely older woman and an Albanian teenage girl she rescues from a trafficker at Gatwick airport. So accomplished, it's hard to believe this is Alex Hourston's first novel. (Good Housekeeping)

With unflinching coolness and a voice vice-grip strong, you have no choice but to listen to Maggie as she tells her story. (Sainsbury's Magazine)

A slow burner that delivers in a most satisfying way. (Fanny Blake, Woman & Home)

Full of the most dazzling observations which, as a writer, I wish that I'd had myself. (Allison Pearson)

An unsettling but powerful story about family breakdown and urban loneliness. (Sunday Mirror)

Book Description:

This unsettling debut novel tells the story of an unlikely friendship between two very different women, for readers of THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS and NOTES ON A SCANDAL.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0571316670
• ISBN 13: 9780571316670
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304