The Lodgers is a clever and well executed novel focusing on self-identity and the small ways in which people adapt to their surroundings. It is a study of transient living and looks at found family and outsiderdom. The protagonist has moved to a subletting flat to be near her estranged mother, living in constant anxiety over the potential return of her flatmate and envisioning an intricate fantasy life for her successor in her previous sublet. Whilst I found the book well written and the concept intriguing, including some poignant moments that truly took me back to being a student and my experience of temporary living, I didn't enjoy the second person narrative, I always find this makes me feel a little uncomfortable and it strikes me as a little juvenile - that being said, this is an entirely personal opinion and I still rated the novel, it just wasn't my cup of tea stylistically.

I enjoyed the writing style of this book and I really thought that it was leading up to be something good but the ending was just too confusing, it was like a really long joke and then you are left confused because you don’t get the punchline, I thought that it had potential to go many places with the ending but instead it just went nowhere and the ending was just a let down for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. Horribly written, incomprehensible non-story filled with non-characters about nothing. Some non-entity moves around, lodges with various boring people, and basically dosses about pointlessly. No idea what point Pester was trying to make but she is an utterly incompetent storyteller and an immensely dull writer. Easily the worst novel I've read all year - the only good thing is how quickly I'll forget having read such dross.

This is a spare novel with a biting but humane perceptiveness to it yet a light touch. The take on the housing crisis and the weird proximity of people in house shares feels really resonant and empathetic. It's so timely as long-term house sharing becomes a way of life these days, especially in London and other big cities. The author is also a poet and her care for language carries the reader along, in the knowledge that her gaze is full of curiosity and a lucid sense of detail. Really intrigued to read her next.

The strength of this book lies in its rendition of two different structures or points of view. One involves the narrator visiting her childhood home, while the other imagines someone else referred to as "you" inhabiting places as a lodger (places where she might have lived herself in the past, but it isn't clear). The concept is quite novel, and I liked it. However, ultimately, I didn't find much meaning in the chapters formed as "slice of life" (both the main narrator and the second mystery person whom the MC refers to as "you"). I enjoyed the exploration of belonging (both in a static place and in a stable relationship) and the difficulties of forming human connections with a nomadic existence.
Rating: 3.5/5
Thanks to Granta publications and netgalley for the ARC!!

This was an interesting book because it dealt with issues that I have not seen in many books before. How we live and what modern housing solutions mean for our everyday experience were, for me at least, the focal points - closely followed by the protagonists' relationship with their mother and the place they come from.

In a way, these two themes come together in the structure of the book: Some chapters are told in the first person. A woman has returned to her hometown and is preparing to meet Moffa, her mother, with whom she has a turbulent history. At the same time, she is known in this place, but never really gets into contact with the old world trying to suck her back in. She instead lives in an uncomfortable sublet situation with a roommate who never shows up, waiting.

Other chapters are told in the second person, addressed to an imaginary woman who moves into the house where the narrator used to live with a mother and child. She imagines this other person doing what she did, feeling what she felt - and why she might feel or act differently. Here, she examines her own mixed feelings on motherhood, family and belonging.

These two narrative levels exist side by side and overlap. The Lodgers had a cinematic quality for me, and I really enjoyed the reading experience. In the end, it was an interesting book - maybe I need a bit more to find out how great it was.

This book was not for me. I found the different POV's confusing and with little to no backstory I just wasn't invested in the characters. This would have been a DNF but it was our book club pick, unfortunately most others felt the same way although we did enjoy the twist ending.

DNF - The synopsis led me to believe this would be a good I would enjoy but, I think I tried to read it at the wrong time because I was not able to engage with the story. I will come back around at a later date & seek out this story.

I found this book a little difficult to get into given the short paragraphs and odd structure. It was a good read nonetheless but something that I might be hesitant to pick up again. This is more because of my difficulties than the author's abilities.

This is a complicated book to explain.
The novel starts with a woman moving into a short-term, generic sublet apartment with a noticeably absent flatmate. She is also alternately talking to “you” who is in a seemingly parallel situation, currently moving into a temporary room in the house of a single mother and her young child. She vividly describes the first day and life with the woman and her daughter, indicating it is perhaps a situation she has been in herself. In the main narrative, the woman has just returned to the town she left in her teens, where Moffa, her narcissistic mother, still lives. She does this frequently, opting for different rentals each time. The narrator is planning to visit her mother but is anxious. When she does attempt to visit her, Moffa is never at home. There are layers of complexity to their relationship, which led the narrator to leave home at 16 and begin a nomadic existence. The ending is open, but I found it hard to understand as things happen, but it is all very vague and confusing.

The narrator, employing a first-person, stream-of-consciousness style, explores her feelings of alienation juxtaposed with the enchantment she observes in the mother-daughter bond of the second “you” narrative, a relationship she struggles to relate to due to her own un-nurtured childhood.
We follow the narrator's interactions and the relationships she forms along the way, which tend to end up leaving her feeling unwanted. For instance, a notable aspect of her stay is the anticipation and anxiety over meeting the elusive flatmate who is never present, adding to the narrative's sense of mystery and unfulfilled connection.
Despite the vivid descriptions and flashbacks, the plot remains elusive and meandering, focusing more on the protagonist's inner experiences and reflections.

This book overall, left me with a sense of sadness after following this character, who has little choice but to find herself in places where people don’t want her.
I'm not sure I entirely understood the plot, but I clearly Understood the themes of belonging, childhood and alienation.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book for my honest review.

An interesting debut novel which follows an unnamed narrator who is giving an account of subletting from someone and her previous experience as a lodger elsewhere but as if it is the new person moving in. Completed stream of consciousness writing which I still can't work if I love or loathe!
Two books I have read similar in style really have stayed with me and this style of writing always makes me think.
I have given this a 3.5 but raised to a 4 because I know I will maybe try and read this again in the future and make notes.
If you enjoy weird, quirky, stream of consciousness, short books, you will like this.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
P.S. I hope this is the final cover - I love it.

An impressive debut novel from a writer (and academic) previously prize-shortlisted for her debut poetry collection “Comic Timing”.

It is told over 54 short chapters which alternate between two different storylines:

A first person account where each chapter is titled “Moffa the [noun]” (town, house, rain, sounds, leaving, walls, bathroom, view etc);

A second person account where each chapter is titled “You [verb]” (arrive, are embarrassed, play with Milly, laugh at toys, hear words etc).

In the first set our unnamed female narrator has moved back to the town where her mother (think of Moffa as a personalised rendering of mother in what is a far from traditional mother-daughter relationship) lives. When the narrator was a child and teenager Moffa, who worked somewhat itinerantly as a TV and stage actress, had a series of lodgers staying in their house. Now the narrator has taken a sub-let in her home town – one with a small view of her childhood home. The sub-let is probably against the tenancy of the absent male who sub-lets the flat: he for example asking her to pay rental with a “birthday money” or similar reference and not to interact with the neighbours).

Moffa is nowhere to be seen – even when the narrator gets around to going to her house; equally mysteriously absent is Kav (whose named is marked with a post-it note on the other bedroom of the flat) – but the narrator finds herself reluctantly drawn into the life of the town, including a pub-quiz about which one of Moffa’s old friends is obsessed.

Before her (temporary) move back to her home town the narrator took (exactly one year previously) studied in a different town for a rather alternative course (taking “elements from all these theories [triangulation in the workplace … triangulation in geometry … triangulation in data science] – adding some Buddhist principles of the three bodies, bits of acupuncture and some dance”) while lodging with a mother and young daughter family. There she stays in a single bedroom which she has to vacate during the day while the mother works as a beautician.

And what gives the book its real distinctiveness is that the second set of chapters – are addressed to someone that the narrator imagines replaces her in the house, doing the same course and encountering many of the same things (including becoming something of an additional family member drawn in by the irrepressible young daughter – and encountering a visiting professor who stays from time to time in a garage conversion and who the “you” – at least – starts sleeping with). The sections therefore feel like a way for the narrator to examine her feelings and experiences at a distance.

Recommended for anyone looking for a book which is both distinctive (if not even quirky) in its style and yet impactful in its subject matter – effectively the transactional economics of the UK’s housing crisis and how the impermanency it engenders impacts lives (particularly those of young women).

The economy of you entering that house for the first time, as I once did, is as specific as baking: the transactions, the equivalents, the values that are substance, the values that are pressure, the timing and the work and the promises, the heat, the shape, the terms.

An experimental novel made up of short chapters, alternating between the protagonist imagining the new ‘her’ in her recently vacated rented room and the current reality of waiting for her mother to arrive back in the hometown where she’s subletting a room with an invisible flatmate. The Lodgers is oddly detached, and I probably couldn’t have taken a longer novel in the style, but I thought it was a fresh look at the loneliness of renting.

This book just was not my cup of tea.
It is clearly well written I just found the abstraction of it a barrier to engagement for me.

"The Lodgers" is an experimental piece of prose with interestingly woven narrative. Through two characters, Holly Pester explores the subject of shared living spaces and not really feeling at home. The writing style doesn't make this novel easy to read, but after a while I was able to immerse myself in the eeriness of situations and relationships portrayed in this book.

'The Lodgers' offers a thought-provoking exploration of the pressures and exigencies of living in shared and temporary accommodation. The unnamed narrator describes moving into a sublet flat in the small town where she grew up so that she can be close to her mother ('Moffa'). At the same time, the narrator imagines 'you' moving into the home in another town where she had previously been a lodger, living alongside a single mother and her young daughter. The novel alternates between these two strands of the 'I' in one town and the 'you' in the other.

I really admired the precision and insight with which Holly Pester unpicks the deeply transactional nature of modern living for so many people, in which every aspect of our life can be commodified. The 'you' figure is required to absent her bedroom during daytime hours as it is transformed into her landlady's beauty parlour, and the narrator reflects on the very specific kitchen and bathroom privileges that are included in the £27 per night she pays, and the sacrifices this entails for both landlady and lodger, observing that 'How we cater for and clean ourselves will be convenient for another person we live with, or not.' To lodge, according to the narrator is, 'to adapt and hide my needs rather than dig down, simply hover without much substance, meekly occupy, as the tenant of the tenant.'

We also come away from this book with a powerful sense of what it means to be someone else's side-hustle: at one point, 'you' describes themselves as 'a minor yet neutral source of income'. The narrator also looks back on renting out a previous apartment from an acquaintance on the condition that she would 'leave occasionally and erase all evidence of yourself when Beverly needed to stay there for work.' These interactions invariably cheapen and dehumanise both parties.

This is in many ways a strange and unsettling read, with many parts of the story remaining unknown and mysterious, such as the narrator's supposed flatmate Kav and her relationship with Moffa. But at its heart it engages profoundly with the fundamental issue of housing and what it means to occupy space in today's world. It reminded me of recent novels such as Jo Hamya's 'Three Rooms' which also grapple with these questions but by focusing specifically on lodging, Pester finds a new and important angle on this topic. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

The Lodgers was a lot more offbeat that I was expecting - but I mean that as a compliment!

It follows a woman who is navigating a new house share and envisioning who is living in the room she recently vacated. I haven't read any books with this a story-focus before, so loved the fresh feel of reading a book that feels so new in terms of theme.

As someone who has lived in many house shares in my time, this was a subject that I found relatable. And the slight absurdity and projection of the story, along with the way it is written, actually does capture the unsettling sense that accompanies these shared-house situations. A unique read that pops into my mind regularly since reading.

This clever quirky little story will stay with me. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone who is fed up reading the same old tropes and stories by numbers because this debut novel is in a class of its own.

The Lodgers by Holly Pester is so well-written and explores what it feels like to live somewhere without being fully at home there. I think readers who enjoy contemporary literary fiction by authors such as Natasha Brown, Deborah Levy and Ali Smith would appreciate this.