The plan was to read a few pages, maybe the first chapter, and then put “The House Hunt” down and read an earlier book by its author, British crime and mystery writer C.M. Ewan (also know as Chris Ewan, creator of the “Good Thief” series).
Selling your house? Just hope the would-be buyer in ‘The House Hunt’ doesn’t show up
FICTION: C.M. Ewan’s novel capitalizes on the paranoia of having to open our homes to strangers.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 20, 2024 at 12:30PM
Turns out Ewan’s latest thriller didn’t want to be put down.
If I’d been wearing something with lapels, the book would have grabbed me by them and not let go. It might even have shook me a little. It begged to be finished in one sitting, but I wasn’t able to oblige it. It took me a couple of days — which is even better. Is there anything quite like a lapel-grabbing book, waiting to be read?
Anybody who has put their house on the market will relate to “House Hunt,” especially the anxiety that accompanies the process, and more especially if you’re a Londoner named Lucy who has finished renovating a house your boyfriend Sam inherited. The two did most of the work themselves, skimping on nothing. Despite all the sweat equity, they are selling because they’ve decided to leave London for good: “A clean slate. Starting again.”
From the first sentence, you know something’s not right, that the anxiety surrounding this real estate transaction is in a class by itself: “Paranoia stalks me when I’m vacuuming the house and Sam is out.” Lucy is readying the house for a viewing but she is also readying herself. Her attack of nerves seems to be connected with her mysterious references to “what happened to me.”
Lucy doesn’t like being alone; she likes being with strangers even less. Her plan was to go to a nearby cafe while her estate agent, Bethany, showed the potential buyer around the house. Then Bethany calls. Leaves a voicemail. She’s running late. The viewing is in 15 minutes.
Lucy supposes she could cancel, but their “debts were spiraling” and she and Sam need this potential buyer to make an offer. She’ll just have to deal, although it won’t be easy. Lucy does what she has hoped never to have to do: She lets a stranger into her house.
Ewan is adept at building the trust necessary to prolong suspense, among characters and the reader. Lucy is suspicious and fearful right out of the gate, so Ewan must provide a path for her — and us — to move forward. (The sane thing to do, after all, is for her to reschedule the viewing.) He does this by alternating Lucy’s first-person chapters with third-person chapters involving Sam, a psychological and behavioral science lecturer at the London School of Economics.
As Lucy shows Donovan the house, Sam carefully leads a group of five people confronting their phobias. The juxtaposition grounds the action even while Ewan keeps the tension thrumming, the sense of unease never letting up.
Even though the plot occasionally strains credulity, the short chapters — I do love a short chapter — kept pushing me forward, egging me on to read just one more. And so I did, collecting a bit of real estate wisdom along the way: If you’re selling your house and the person looking at it never takes their gloves off, be very afraid.
The House Hunt
By: C.M. Ewan.
Publisher: Grand Central, 423 pages, $30.
St. Paul writer Kao Kalia Yang has won four Minnesota Book Awards and was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
