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Most Anticipated Books of 2024 mentions in The Telegraph, Guardian, Stylist, and Vice
A dark comedy about lodgings, lovers, and mother-daughter bonds that falter across time and tenancies.
After a year away, a woman returns to her English hometown to live in a sublet. She is always on edge, anticipating a visit from her landlord, the arrival of her unknown roommate, and an impending reunion with her mother, Moffa. Her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left and the life she imagines its new occupant to be leading.
The dramas of temporary housing and the lasting effects of impermanence are turned out in this irreverent and boldly stylish novel that examines a life lived in other people’s spaces. A subtly comic novel about Generation Rent, this is a stunning debut from a writer already hailed as one of the most original poets of her generation.
"It is a rare debut that manages to tell a uniquely personal story while illuminating the problems of a generation. Holly Pester’s The Lodgers is such a book, reading more like a modern classic than a first novel."—The Irish Times
"Holly Pester is a genius and The Lodgers gets into everything that matters."—Kate Briggs, author of The Long Form
"It is a rare debut that manages to tell a uniquely personal story while illuminating the problems of a generation. Holly Pester’s The Lodgers is such a book, reading more like a modern classic than a first novel."—The Irish Times
"Funny, nightmarish and diffuse all at once, but always as sharp as a knife... Fizzing with the life it reflects and played for the blackest of laughs."—The Guardian
"This book convinced me that we are on the brink of a new literary form: the novel about precarious housing, and rent."—Electric Literature
"Pester writes with a poet’s feeling for textual space... The Lodgers brings poetry’s touch to bear on narrative form. If this book is about precarious housing, then it’s also a work that lets its reader in on the possibility that, to paraphrase Hölderlin, poetically we dwell."—Chicago Review
"The Lodgers is certainly compelling… Littered throughout are shrewd observations on the rootlessness of renting, and ships-in-the-night cohabitation."—Times Literary Supplement
"In the crafty debut novel by one of Britain’s best young poets, a woman moving into a sub-let flat is preoccupied by thoughts of the one she’s left, and who’s living there now."—The Telegraph
"The Lodgers is a hugely impressive debut... this novel is not just engaging, but deeply rewarding."—Business Post
"A disorienting tale of flatmates and precarious housing arrangements comes with a hard political truth in this stylish debut novel."—The Observer
"The raging instability of the housing market and its impact on Generation Rent find rare poetic expression in this arresting debut... A novel that sharply captures the precarity of basic 21st-century living."—Daily Mail
"Compelling [and] pleasingly weird."—Literary Review
"The protagonist of The Lodgers is good company despite (and because of) her anxious spiralling, which brims with sharp observation and dry humour."—EVENT
"A raw and uncompromising dive into the shadows of existence… Brilliantly and movingly rendered."—Buzz Magazine
"This novel 'holds a pressing, political truth.'"—The Week
"[Pester] uses her craft to manipulate time and space, creating a rich, complex, layered world."—Frieze
"This brief but captivating read will wickedly resonate with anyone who’s had to navigate precarious and depressing lettings."—Stylist
"A bold, sharp novel."—Vice
"The Lodgers is an excellent, funny exploration of impermanence."—Tripwire
"“The restless tactics of Holly Pester’s extraordinary sentences enact the precarity of the living conditions she describes. Holly Pester is a genius and The Lodgers gets into everything that matters."—Kate Briggs, author of The Long Form
"A sad strange lyrical story of shame and displacement whose strength will not let you go"—Sheena Patel, author of I'm a Fan
"Very smart and sharply written. Anyone who has ever rented or sub-let or couch-surfed will instantly identify with the pain in this book, with the slightly altered sense of reality"—Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples
"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, author of Steal As Much As You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity
"With tang and pith in every sentence, The Lodgers speaks to a generational epidemic of rootlessness and porous selfhood with vital wit and utter originality."—AK Blakemore, author of The Glutton
Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with original dramatic work on BBC Radio 4 and collaborations with Serpentine Galleries, Women’s Art Library and Wellcome Collection. Pester lives in Colchester, England.