The Household Spirit

Two identical houses sit on an isolated stretch of Route 29 in Queens Falls, N.Y. In one house lives Howard Jeffries—a divorced, 50-year-old worker at a water-treatment plant who leads a solitary life. He thinks often of fishing, his now-defunct family unit, and his mysterious next-door neighbor. Emily Phane, the same age as his daughter, lives next to Howard and tends to her elderly grandfather. Although they have not spoken, their mutual watching of and interest in each other provides a strange comfort—for Howard, her presence stirs a protective paternal instinct that has been dormant since the departure of his daughter, and for Emily, watching Howard distracts from debilitating sleep troubles, a complicated love life, and her grandfather’s mortality. When Emily’s desperation comes to a breaking point, her cry for help elicits a response from her shy and awkward neighbor. From there, an unlikely and close friendship develops that changes the direction of both their lives. Wodicka’s story of two eccentrics living a strange coexistence can be jarring, but it’s also touching. The accounts of sleep paralysis, grief, and personal demons make for a novel well worth reading. (June)