Housesitting
A Novel
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Housesitting
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Pallavi Wakharkar
A smart and daring debut novel about a young woman who discovers herself within a series of housesitting gigs and soon becomes entangled in a couple's private life, perfect for readers of Luster and The Guest
“An auspicious and exciting debut.” —Lorrie Moore
Rumi is fresh out of college and looking for a place to live in the city when she stumbles into the perfect arrangement: housesitting a beautiful townhouse in the West Village. The house comes with a menagerie of animals to care for, a fully-stocked fridge and pantry, and Saif—a handsome writer ten years her senior who uses the upstairs office as his workspace.
Aimless, energetic, and unmoored, Rumi is attracted to Saif, who is wise and sophisticated, everything Rumi hopes to one day be. But Saif is not entirely available. His relationship with a woman named Jaya is more complex than it seems, and soon, Rumi finds herself growing closer to the two of them—and closer, too, to discovering the person she wants to become.
As Rumi explores her new adult life within the intimate, liminal spaces of other people’s homes—first in the West Village, and later, within other housesitting gigs, too—she must examine intricate questions about her own immigration from India, her duties towards the people who raised her, and the contesting cultures to which she belongs. Pallavi Wakharkar’s Housesitting is a novel brimming with confident clarity. What does it mean to belong in a home, to belong in a country—to belong, even, to the people we love?
Commentaires
Reviews
“Housesitting is a perfect window into the glorious mess of life in your early 20s and the growing pains of becoming who you are. This wise novel captures the intoxication of trying on a life that isn't yours with wry wit and gleaming prose. Pallavi Wakharkar is a keen cataloguer of the little things that make up a life. She nails the complexities of an uneven friendship; in Housesitting, you'll find the pendulum swing of adoration, jealousy, and (thank goodness) forgiveness. I loved every word.”
—Katie Yee, author of Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
Pallavi Wakharkar’s Housesitting brilliantly captures the nomadic life of young people in their twenties. What does it mean to have a home or not to have one, and what is our relationship to these conditions? Housesitting’s protagonist is looking at the makeshift urban peregrinations of herself, friends, lovers, and family. Temporary nesting and domestic performance are both metaphors and not. In many aspects Housesitting is an American companion novel to Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, but with the sound of more voices—wishing, laughing, forgiving, joking. It marks an auspicious and exciting debut.
—Lorrie Moore, author of I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, winner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
"Wakharkar is a new voice to be reckoned with! Housesitting is a harrowing novel about the aimless seasons of youth, and more importantly, a brilliant exploration of how our spaces and communities determine who we are allowed to be and become. Who is welcome in the house that is America? And what roles are we expected to perform to be allowed to stay?"
—CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife
"What a remarkable debut this is–Housesitting is a glorious mix of hilarity, blunt honesty, desire, gorgeous sentences, powerful insight and vulnerability, all gathered and held by the strength of Wakharkar's guiding intelligence. I read it with great admiration."
—Aimee Bender, New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Housesitting is a whip smart novel about the precariousness of life in your twenties. Young Rumi moves to New York with vague, starry-eyed dreams only to find herself swept up in the life of the 1 percent, housesitting the West Village. Everything blows up (doesn't it always?). But what makes this book one of the best coming-of-age stories I've ever read is the humor and pathos of Rumi's struggle to make a life for herself. Every sentence is a jewel, constructed with intelligence and a fine filigree of sharp wisdom. Wakharkar is a writer to watch."
—Leigh Newman, author of Nobody Gets Out Alive, longlisted for the National Book Award
