![]() ![]() Then there is the house itself, which is another body. ![]() When the rest of the Walker clan arrive to set Richard’s estate in order their physical frailties are dissected by the ethereal voyeurs: ex-wife Caroline has gotten fat, daughter Minna is fragile and oversexed, and teenage son Trenton is a limping, pimpled, masturbating wreck. ![]() Not having bodies of their own, Alice and Sandra take a great deal of interest in the bodies of others. Two deceased former residents - Alice and Sandra - are the main narrators. ![]() This is fortunate because those who die at the Walker home, an old country house that is now getting to be a bit run down, have a thing for hanging around. The novel begins with the passing of Richard Walker, who has the good fortune not to die at home. Lauren Oliver’s Rooms is a novel solidly within this tradition. They are codependents, experiencing mutual release only in the fall of the House of Usher, or whatever their address happens to be. Indeed, in many cases the identity of a ghost may be so closely bonded to their former home that, after death, the two become inextricable. Houses also express the personality of their owners and haunted houses are no exception. In America it’s a tradition that runs from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables through Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, all the way up to the cable show American Horror Story. Haunted houses are possessed by the troubled spirits of those who came to unfortunate ends within their walls. ![]()
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