Will This House Last Forever?

by Xanthi Barker

When Xanthi Barker's father died when she was in her mid twenties, she could make no sense of her grief for a man who had been absent for most of her life. Her father, poet Sebastian Barker, had left Xanthi, her mother and her brother to pursue writing and a new relationship, when Xanthi was a baby. Growing up she had always struggled to reconcile his extravagant affection - a rocking horse crafted from scavenged wood, the endless stream of poems and drawings and letters, conversations that spiralled from the structure of starlight to philosophy to Bruce Springsteen - with the fact that he could not be depended upon for more everyday things. Though theirs was a relationship defined by departures, he always returned, so why should this farewell be any different, or more final?

Will This House Last Forever? is a heartfelt and wholly original memoir about the pain of having to come to terms with a parent's mortality, the way grief so utterly defies logic, and about learning to see the flaws in those that we love, and let them go.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

368 pages, Hardcover

Published June 24, 2021

Reviews

[Mairead Hearne (swirlandthread.com) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will this house last forever? by Xanthi Barker was published June 24th with Tinder Press and is described as ‘a stunning debut – a piercingly honest and heartfelt memoir for fans of Grief is a Thing with Feathers, My Wild and Sleepless Nights or The Outrun’

For anyone who has lost a parent, time stops. Living in a world that will never be the same again, the word forever takes on a very new meaning, as the realization hits you that you will never see, hear, feel your mother or father again There is no forever. Xanthi Barker came to this dreadful realization following the death of her father, poet Sebastian Barker, when he passed away January 31st 2014.

The relationship between Xanthi and her father was a strained one but yet, over the years, they shared moments that were precious for Xanthi. She recognised the type of man he was, a self-absorbed individual with little room in his life for a wife or children, but she craved his love, his attention.

A romantic at times, he wooed her mother and convinced her to follow him to Greece where he had purchased a decrepit old building that he intended renovating. With no clue as to what she was getting involved in, her mother made the move to Greece. Initially she enjoyed the romance of this wild adventure. Living between Greece and the UK, life was exciting. But when children arrived on the scene, Sebastian Barker made a decision to move his wife and children out of the family home as he needed peace to work. He later told Xanthi that her mother broke their marriage contract by giving up her job to look after Xanthi and her older brother.

Xanthi reflects back over those years and recalls the challenges her mother encountered. Sebastian was an absent father and husband. He had little time for family life, always so very much wrapped up in himself and his work. Xanthi recounts stories of her time in Greece when herself and her brother would go on their summer holidays there with their father. He drank heavily every evening, sharing anecdotes of his life and memories of old. He gave Xanthi and her brother more freedom than their mother, often arriving with very impractical gifts, clueless of how to act and be around children.

As Xanthi got older, she began to long for her father’s recognition, acknowledgement of her existence and, in his own small way, he did gratify this need. Over the years, as she approached adulthood, they conversed a little more, but the damage to Xanthi’s self -confidence was clear. Xanthi struggled for years with her own personal relationships. She had commitment issues and was perpetually in search of something that no-one could seem to help her with.

Following his cancer diagnosis, and subsequent death, Xanthi sought her father out in various places, unable to accept his passing. For years after she looked for him, finding nothing but a memory, a shadow.

Now she is finally coming to grips with his passing and moving on with her life.

“I don’t like missing you, that’s the truth of it. It’s uncomfortable. It makes me feel hollow and ungrounded, distant from the living people I care about. So it’s not as though I don’t miss you, the rest of the time, but that I had to learn how to let go of that feeling, to step away from the bereft daughter and look out of another window in myself. After however many years treading around in here, it’s easy enough to find the space”

Writing Will this house last forever? was, I’m sure, very cathartic for Xanthi Barker. It is a very intense exploration of a father and daughter relationship. A memoir at such a young age may seem strange but, I sense that it was necessary for Xanthi Barker to be able to accept her father posthumously for who he was. Throughout the book she refers to her father as ‘you’, making it a very personal reading experience, almost like a collection of letters, with her pain evident as the chapters open out. Sebastian Barker was an egotist, with seemingly little regret for the trail of devastation he left behind, as he fulfilled his own artistic endeavours. Did he see his behaviour as acceptable? Did he have any regrets?

Will this house last forever? is an extremely personal, raw, emotional and exposed memoir. It is an honest account of a daughter’s longing for a father who would love her as much as she loved him. A truly beautiful and evocative read, Will this house last forever? is a perceptive and poignant read.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read non fiction but there was something about this book that appealed to me. My first thoughts, during the prologue was that nothing I had read previously had contained as much raw emotion as Will This House Last Forever. That feeling didn’t fade as I read more.

I don’t read a lot of poetry, I occasionally look for a certain poem if it is mentioned in a film or novel. I had never heard of Sebastian Barker. But not knowing anything about him didn’t impact on my appreciation of this novel. Instead it had me looking for more information, wanting to know more about him and his work.

This is a novel about a daughter talking to her father. She mulls over their relationship, their friendship, their disappointments and her devastation over his illness and eventual death. It all felt incredibly honest, Sebastian isn’t shown to be without faults. He had many, usually involving alcohol or his work but as Xanthi got older and started to care for him as his health deteriorated she accepted them more. But she also acknowledged that she often felt embarrassed or let down by him. She also accepted her own failings, especially with relationships, insecurities with friendship and also the problems caused by her own issues with alcohol and eating disorders.

Once I got used to all the other characters described as your wife, my brother, my mother I realised it was the only way it could be. This was just about father and daughter. Each of them could have had their own story to tell, their own memories of good times and bad.

Sebastian’s character really showed during this novel. Talented, charismatic but sometimes flawed. And his daughter loved him.

[Jaffareadstoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this expressive memoir, Xanthi Barker explores her thoughts and feelings after the death of her father, Sebastian Barker, in 2014. That her poet father was such an important figure in her life is obvious and though she never doubted his love for her there's also a sense of disappointment as by her own admission he was something of an absent father.

From the beginning of the book, Xanthi is filled with a longing for father not to be dead and yet it is very much about the effect that his death has had on her, not only in coming to terms with the complexity of the grieving process, but also in the rawness and immediacy of her loss.

Will this House Last Forever? is a very personal account of the author's search for meaning, her yearning to understand more about the complex nature of her relationship with her father, and of her devastation when he was no longer present in her life.

I found Will This House Last Forever? to be a poignant, and very honest look at a complex father-daughter relationship especially when that relationship has been flawed by disappointments and indifference. However, for all its strong message that loss endures, by the end of the book, there is also a sense of love, and the life-affirming hope that Xanthi's future, without her father, and regardless of his faults and failings, is undeniably intact.

[Beth Horry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly moving book. I gravitated towards this book as I have rarely seen books that discuss father child relationships and even more so father-daughter. Xanthi is wholly honest and vulnerable which is hard to read but relationships are hard sometimes. Her fathers flaws are on full display and she does not hold back at detailing how this affected her. However, we often love people in spite of their flaws and this is what is shown in this book. Beautifully written and hard to put down, I was thoroughly grateful to be given a view of Xanthi’s relationship with her father.

[Rebecca]

I read the first 35 pages. Had I not read Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour relatively recently, perhaps I would have found this fresher, but it was so similar (writing in the wake of the death of one’s father, an eccentric poet) and the prose suffered by comparison. I couldn’t bear the thought of reading another 90%.

[Chloë · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful story of grief and losing a parent who was never really there. The voice really got me... it was so raw and lacking in pretense. I loved the way the deceased is addressed throughout as 'you', and how contradictory feelings sat side by side. Writing about grief is incredibly difficult, and I find that it often ends up kind of trite, but not in this case.

[Ian Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly beautiful. An intimate portrait of a defining relationship in all its complexity. It is exquisitely drawn. The gentle but assured prose is jeweled with transcendent moments even as it is grounded in the minutiae of grief and love and being. Superb and hopeful and sweet and shattering.

[Debs Torr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, on the death of a father and the intricacies of a more complicated father-daughter relationship exposes so much of the raw feeling following a death - even the feelings that are unpalatable or considered widely unacceptable. It's an incredibly moving and beautifully written book.

[Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written, incredibly open and honest. Real clarity of voice, just great

[Gabriella McGrogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly beautiful and moving read- I had to read it in small parts because it evokes lots of emotions, both warm and nostalgic and sad!

[Stacey Woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one for me - I can’t fairly review someone else’s grief, but this was DNF at about 50%

[Tilly Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always find it difficult to review a memoir, and especially one on loss and grief, because how can you agree or disagree with someone’s personal experience of something which is so unique to them?

So here’s what I will say. The way in which the author lost her father was a very different experience to mine, and yet I recognised so many of the complicated emotions which she discusses here. How difficult it can be to reconcile the loss of a parent who you didn’t have that picture perfect relationship with, where your history was complex and tumultuous. And how hard accepting the loss and trying to let go can be. Whilst each experience is unique, I think Barker’s writing will lend comfort and a sense of being seen to a lot of people.

And if nothing else, her writing is out of this world. She clearly inherited her father’s gift for writing (he was a poet), because this memoir is lyrical and magical, and I am in awe at the way she has managed to capture her feelings and story in such a stunning way. You can almost feel how cathartic it must’ve been to write this all down, and in some ways, reading this has encouraged me to try to write about my own experience so that I can try to understand it better. So I’m very grateful for that.

Be prepared to feel incredibly emotional, especially if you’ve experienced this kind of grief. There were certainly moments filled with tears whilst reading this, but that’s its own kind of catharsis for the reader. The only thing I’d say is to make sure the time is right for you, personally, to read this.

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will this house last forever is a painfully aware story of a young woman coming to terms with her absentee father dying in her 20s. It's told in a series of different short stories about different aspects of her father's life from different perspectives. Parts of it were written in the second person perspective which is unique and a pleasant surprise to shift the focus of the story.

I recommend this to anyone who likes to read new writing in interesting ways, that play with perspectives and timelines. It’s a raw, sentimental but also detached perspective of a daughter trying to connect to her poet father after his death.