The Lodgers
Holly Pester
‘What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.’
After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep an eye on her wayward mother, Moffa. Living in a precarious sub-let, she is always on edge, anticipating a visit from the landlord or the arrival of the other resident. But her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new lodger she has never met, but whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination.
The minor dramas of temporary living are prised open and ransacked in Holly Pester’s irreverent reckoning with those who house us. This is a story about what it means to live and love within and outside of family structures. It is also a stunning first novel from a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.
Holly Pester is a genius and The Lodgers gets into everything that matters. — Kate Briggs
There is no one better than Holly Pester at communicating the eerie, sometimes hilarious and often hallucinatory experience of modern precarity. This is a novel for the age and for generation rent: a captivating and unforgettable account of how economic circumstance can lead to a feeling of being only half alive. — Nathalie Olah
Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with BBC Radio, Women’s Art Library and Wellcome Collection.