The See-through House

By Shelley Klein Chatto & Windus, 288pp, £16.99

When Shelley Klein moved to High Sunderland, the spectacular modernist house near Selkirk designed by Peter Womersley in 1956, to take care of her elderly father, the textile designer Bernat Klein, she was welcomed back into the glasswalled rooms she had known as a girl, although the furniture and house plants she’d accumulated in the 30 years she’d been away were not. This wasn’t wholly unexpected, however it reignited a familiar tension between her and the man she both railed against and revered. In a book that is part memoir, part heartfelt eulogy, Shelley maps her father’s life and career through the floorplan of the house he had built for her and her siblings; from glass hallways, to the living room and bedrooms, and finally to the garden where the children say their last goodbyes to an eccentric and fastidious, but ultimately adored, father.

A touching and timely account of familial love, The See-through House takes on much greater resonance in our period of lockdown, compelling readers to appreciate the importance of home and family anew. ■