NOVEL HOUSES
TWENTY FAMOUS FICTIONAL DWELLINGS
CHRISTINA HARDYMENT Bodleian Library, 250pp, £25
Rook-racked, turreted, ivy-clad, the famous houses of fiction tend to hugger mugger not minimalism. In the Guardian, Kathryn Hughes, reviewing Christina Hardyment’s ‘sparkling mini-essays’ on fictional homes, wondered if this was something to do with them being ‘dragged up from the twistiest parts of the unconscious’.
Manderley, Howards End, the Castle of Otranto … most reviewers agreed that Hardyment’s selection wasn’t particularly original but most of them enjoyed settling down on the familiar fictional sofa. As Laura Freeman in the Times put it: ‘Curl up beside your own Lytel Fire-place and imagine yourself among the comforts of the Shire. In The Hobbit (1937), when the homebody Bilbo Baggins is saved from certain death at the hands of the goblins, the eagle who rescues him asks: “What is finer than flying?” Tolkien writes: “Bilbo would have liked to say: ‘A warm bath and late breakfast on the lawn afterwards’; but he thought it better to say nothing at all.”’ Hughes reflected that ‘In truth, Hardyment has not found much new to say about these literary homes but, like an excellent housekeeper, she rearranges and polishes up the furniture in such a way that you find yourself inclined to linger.’
In the New York Times, Miranda Seymour even managed to bring in Brexit: ‘Perhaps Hardyment’s decision to focus almost exclusively on Britain is meant to highlight a fearful island’s crawl toward ever greater insularity.’