A Stranger's House
Read A Stranger's House Online
Authors: Bret Lott
“SOME WOUNDERFULLY IMAGINED MOMENTS....CHARACTERS WHOSE FAMILY MYSTERY IS FAULKNERIAN, RIFE WITH HIDDEN INTENSITY.”
â
The New York Times
A S
TRANGER'S
H
OUSE
For a long time, Claire and Tom Templeton have wished in vain for a child. What they have instead is a house, a charming old Cape that is their consolation. In the gray chill of a Massachusetts autumn, the Templetons and two local handymen, loners and eccentrics, work to rebuild the ramshackle home. As the house takes on a new life, Claire begins to understand its tangled historyâand to reconcile her own past and renew her hope for the future.
“A smooth, uncompromising novel about learning to live with both the defeat of old dreams and the obligation to fashion new ones.”
â
The Boston Globe
“THERE IS SO MUCH GOOD IN THIS BOOK.
The author is intersted in real life: people who work for a living... and who fumble with some sense of the spirit-life that is brought alive in the murky world of love, marriage, and friendship....Bret Lott creates a character you can care about, one whose life deepens as the book moves forward....REWARDING.”
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The Milwaukee Journal
As in
The Man Who Owned Vermont
, his widely acclaimed first work of fiction, Bret Lott once again depicts a young couple who struggle with difficulties in their marriage....A STRANGER'S HOUSE LIVES, BREATHESâAND IS INDEED BREATHTAKINGLY REAL.”
â
The Los Angeles Times Book Review
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A
STRANGER'S
HOUSE
“Bret Lott is a writer with a gift for evoking the small sadnesses of life and for describing action . . . with the luminous precision of a Dutch painter.”
â
The New York Times Book Review
“I deeply admire
A Stranger's House.
Bret Lott has the rare ability to slip inside the heart and mind of a woman. Claire Templeton is a complex, flawed, sympathetic character, and her frustrations and passions are our own.”
âMeg Wolitzer
“Lott excels at characters in crisis . . . evoking their moments of truth with wit and passion. . . . CLAIRE IS. . . A MEMORABLE, MOVING CHARACTER.”
â
Chicago Tribune
“Coupling the small details of time and place with the grand scale of human emotion, Lott has created a moving second novel. .. . He probes, in understated prose, the subtleties of marriage and the parent-child bond. . . . MEMORABLE.”
â
Library Journal
“In the largest sense,
A Stranger's House
is about sheltering and taking care. .. . A SUSPENSEFUL AND POIGNANT BOOK.”
âCharles Baxter
Also by Bret Lott
THE MAN WHO OWNED VERMONT
A DREAM OF OLD LEAVES
JEWEL
REED'S BEACH
HOW TO GET HOME
FATHERS, SONS, AND BROTHERS
THE HUNT CLUB
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “For the Year of the Insane: A Prayer” from
Live or Die
by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1966 by Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
| A Washington Square Press Publication of |
Copyright © 1988 by Bret Lott
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
ISBN: 0-671-03822-2
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6792-9 (eBook)
First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing January 1990
10Â Â 9Â Â 8Â Â 7Â Â 6Â Â 5Â Â 4Â Â 3Â Â 2
WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
FOR MY PARENTS,
Bill and Barbara,
AND FOR MY CHILDREN,
Zeb and Jake
The author would like to thank the Ohio Arts Council, the South Carolina Arts Commission, and the College of Charleston for their assistance in the completion of this book, as well as John Moore, Ph.D., and Marcy Rosenfield for their technical advice. Thanks, too, to Mindy Werner and Marian Young for their continuing support, insight, and encouragement.
Our inheritance has been turned over
to strangers, our homes to aliens.
âLamentations 5
O mother of the womb,
did I come for blood alone?
âAnne Sexton
“For the Year of the Insane: A Prayer”
A STRANGER'S HOUSE
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“Remote,” I said. I was at the window, the glass dirty with rain-spattered dust. Just outside the window the forest began, thick with pine and birch and oak and maple. The first trees began not five feet away.
The realtor, behind me, said, “Remote is what you and your husband asked for.” She giggled, and I pictured her: gold sport coat, brown polyester skirt, black pumps. Her hands would be folded together in front of her, head cocked to one side, a smile across her face that would show as many teeth as possible. I pictured her in the empty room, the room, house, entire barn and parcel empty, she had told us, for fifteen years.
Still I didn't turn to her, but only looked out the window, the trees heavy with shadow now, the sun already down behind them.
“But not too remote,” she went on. “Not too. Twenty-five minutes from Northampton. That's not
that
bad, considering what you'll be getting: this lovely place with twelve acres and that beautiful barn out there. It's just what the doctor ordered.” She laughed again. I heard her step back, heard the soft click of her shoes across the linoleum.
Sounds came from upstairs, footsteps cracking across the floors up there, then slow steps on the stairs behind me. I turned to the sound.
Tom said, “The floors up there seem sturdy enough.” He had one hand on the banister and was moving down at an angle, almost sideways. “These stairs'll take some getting used to, though.”
He came to a small landing where another set led to the other upstairs room; below the landing were no banisters, and I watched as my husband took each step carefully, his hands out to either side to keep his balance.
The realtor had turned to Tom, too. “A good-morning staircase,” she said, her hands clasped at her chest. “The original. The less space a staircase took up, the more living space there was. That shows what intelligent builders they were.”
She turned to me, her smile just as I had imagined it would be: all teeth, cinnamon lipstick to match her outfit.
I said, “But remote, I guess, is what we want.” I looked from the realtor to Tom. “I guess it's not that far out.”