Vienna English Book Club

Within the walls of these 7 empty houses, you won’t find any ghosts, goblins, or ghouls. Instead, you’ll find them haunted by a dread of another nature entirely.
With *Fever Dream *and Mouthful of Birds, Schweblin already demonstrated her passion for domestic horror, creating dread and unease within the smallest and most mundane situations. It’s such a distinct and difficult feeling to nail, but she does so perfectly within Seven Empty Houses. Each story (or house, in the case of this collection), on the surface, seems to depict an unremarkable scene. Yet each brings with them a unique atmosphere and emotion for the reader, ranging from dread to heartbreak, to vicarious shame, and an almost voyeuristic sense of intruding into another’s personal space.

In None of That, a woman delirious with the shock of a car crash enters the home of a helpful stranger, only to take off with her sugar bowl. Her daughter tries to talk sense into her mother, following this completely irrational behaviour.

In My Parents and My Children, a mother's anxiety over leaving her children with her aging parents is laid bare in a literal way.

In It Happens All the Time (one of the shortest and my favourite out of the stories), a woman observes a strange weekly ritual play out in her neighbour’s yard. After an emotional argument, the husband scatters their deceased son's clothing from the window, to land in the trees like rain.

In Breath from the Depth, an elderly woman struggles with the deterioration and defamiliarization of her own body and memories as she ages.

In 2 Square Feet, a woman reminisces over the space she, her body, and all her stuff take up in the world, as she’s on a nighttime grocery run for aspirin for her mother-in-law.

In An Unlucky Man, a young girl, having witnessed a traumatic event, is helped out by an unfamiliar man. Is he a good Samaritan, or taking advantage of a vulnerable situation?

And finally, in Out, a woman stumbles through the nightly streets in her bathrobe and slippers, in a desperate flight from her apartment, and a difficult conversation with her husband.

source: https://www.thefictionfox.com/