Novel Houses
By Christina Hardyment
Bodleian Library, 240pp, £25/$40
American screenwriters are fond of the term “precinct” to refer to the location where most of the action takes place. It comes from cop shows, but can also be used to refer to coffee shops, offices, even a house. But when novelists set their stories in houses, they run the risk of being dismissed as “domestic”, a strange insult given that the lives of most writers (and readers) – with a few famous exceptions (Hemingway, Kerouac) – are primarily domestic.
