{"id":5747,"date":"2024-07-30T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T12:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5747"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:51:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:51:24","slug":"sian-northey-this-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/30\/sian-northey-this-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Sian Northey: This House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The titular abode of Sian Northey\u2019s This House <\/em>(2011, tr: Susan Walton, 2024) is Nant yr Aur<\/em>, a solitary cottage somewhere in rural North Wales. As a young girl, Anna Morris was fascinated by the place, though she only ever got to see inside in her thirties when, by chance, the door was unlocked. Now she\u2019s in her late fifties, both its owner and solitary resident. However, it wasn\u2019t always that way as she got married to Ioan Gwilym, who was in residence that day over twenty years before, and together they had a son, Dylan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the novel opens, Anna has discharged herself from hospital after a fall (\u201cWhisky was a new habit.\u201d) into the comfort of Nant yr Aur<\/em>. Her leg is in plaster and her mobility is somewhat hampered. Even though she sees herself as independent (\u201cShe didn\u2019t need anybody\u201d) she relies on the assistance of elderly friend, Emyr, who runs errands on her behalf, and his wife, Dora. It would be fair to say that little happens in This House because much of the events have already occurred. This is a quiet novel of processing the past to break out of the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Home from hospital Anna is immediately \u201cfeeling the house relax around her\u201d but like the plaster cast on her leg, it\u2019s really a restraint, only emotional. Nant yr Aur<\/em> is a house haunted by its past, a place where grief is contained within its walls. There are offers to buy the house, although selling up is not worth consideration. One potential buyer, a young man called Si\u00f4n, seems able to slip under Anna\u2019s usual defences, perhaps because the memories she\u2019s holding on to are projectable onto him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a slim cast, each with their own secrets and lives beyond the house, Northey\u2019s story is a relatively straightforward and sensitively drawn affair about breaking out from the routines of grief and grasping what life is left. It\u2019s nicely observed, with time loss, hazy memories, and everyday tasks standing in for purpose. All as one may expect when an idyllic love story slips into a personal nightmare which gets more devastating as long-buried revelations are outed. But the book is not without some optimism. Once Anna walked into this house and chose to stay, but doors can work both ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The titular abode of Sian Northey\u2019s This House (2011, tr: Susan Walton, 2024) is Nant yr Aur, a solitary cottage somewhere in rural North Wales. As a young girl, Anna Morris was fascinated by the place, though she only ever got to see inside in her thirties when, by chance, the door was unlocked. Now Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[326],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-northey-sian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/51iB6wL35lL._AC_UF8941000_QL80_-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1uH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5747"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5794,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5747\/revisions\/5794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}