A Stranger's House

by Bret Lott

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 history -- and to reconcile her own past and renew her hope for the future.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Bret Lott is the bestselling author of fourteen books, most recently the nonfiction collection Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian (Crossway 2013) and the novel Dead Low Tide (Random House 2012). Other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life, and the novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies.

Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, where he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching.

His honors include being named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and writer-in-residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, speaking on Flannery O’Connor at The White House, and having served as a member of the National Council on the Arts from 2006 to 2012. Currently he is nonfiction editor of the journal Crazyhorse. He and his wife, Melanie, live in South Carolina.

Reviews

[Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Baloney. Hard read.

[Suzanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Morose. All about loss, hurt, and fear. The reviews said there was hope. Can’t say I ever saw any hope. That seemed to be crushed if there was even a glimmer of it.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 STARS

I picked up two of Lott's earlier novels from a sale table at independent bookstore. The owners are not really into books, so often they will have great books on sale. I ended up working for this company, and they were more into pop fiction. After reading Jewel, I figured I would try these (A Stranger's House and The Man Who Owned Vermont). It's been two decades but I do remember I liked this novel as I kept it after reading instead of donating. I will need to do a reread some day soon.

[Fran · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this book at all. It is way too confusing and I still have no idea what the heck was going on in the book. I absolutely hated the descriptions of using rabbits as science experiments. This was in my opinion the worst part of this book.

I chose this book because I previously read Jewel by Bret Lott and really liked that book. This one is a disappointment.

[Sidney · Rating 2 out of 5]

So glad to be done with this book. Boring and couldn’t connect with whiny characters. Couple can’t decide about buying a house. Finally in the last 50 pages they did, then find out the backstory on the house. Whoop de-do.

[Cricket Muse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read Jewel, I was prepared for the transparent rawness of Brett Lott’s writing style, that intensity in which he peels back the veneer of coping with life and shows the hurt, anguish, and truths of what it means to live with our humanity. The story still affected me with its intensity.

In this story, Claire and her loving, and notably long suffering, husband are coping with not being able to have children. Claire’s disappointment stymies her work and her work relationships, as she cocoons herself in her hurt. The purchase of their fixer upper serves as a metaphor of building a life together, with a hope of building a family.

Lott’s style is commendable and thought provoking, yet sections are disturbing. Intense detail of Claire’s work with research rabbits, as well as a repeating dream of the children she believes she might have had make it difficult to like her as the protagonist. There is little joy and hope in this story; however, it is still mesmerizing as Lott exposes the underlying emotions of the characters words and actions. There is also the mystery of Grady and Martin.

Not an uplifting story, rather one to admire for its power to dive down below the stilted surface banality found in lighter character driven novels. Reminiscent of Wallace Stegner’s All the Live Little Things for its imagery and introspective switching from past to present.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Claire and Tom Templeton have tried for years to have a child, and have finally to face the fact that they will not be able to have a child of their own. Tom is a journalist, Claire works in brain research in a lab, and they find a house that they want to buy. The man who is selling it is in a nursing home and wants to be rid of the house before he dies. Claire and Tom meet and hire Grady, a teenager, and Martin an idiot savant who is clever with building, to work on getting the house in structural soundness. Soon it becomes clear that Grady is the grandson of the man in the nursing home, and that the house has a lot of history and tragedy hidden in it. Over all, I liked the book. There is a long section about Claire working in the lab, where she is accidentally bitten by a rabbit, and a rabbit is killed that was interesting enough to read, but I don’t really understand why it was included in the book.

[Jennifer]

I just finished it. It was about simple, everyday people and their lives. No private parts, sex is mentioned, but not described.
This author is very into details. It makes you feel that you know every single thing about the characters. That you're there with them. You feel their pain, happiness, and curiousity. It ended well.

Don't read this if you really like bunnies.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detail-driven story about a couple buying a house and refurbishing it with help from a young man and a handicapped man who are somehow tied to the property. Too many details about rabbits in the lab and the desire to have a child...though it has its moments.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lott's writing has a dreamlike quality that makes me feel like I'm almost in a trance when I read it. He's very gifted at detail and description.