Housing is at the heart of the economic and political storm ahead. It’s more than a policy issue. It’s the rationale of where we are. The idea of staying in a house and being in a house starts novels. Building strange things and moving from abandoned in.
Housing It is worth knowing as it reveals the hidden blessings of losses that never make news, with natural wit and eerie clarity. This is not a review of another book. Some readers find a little more of the latest turn of this “magical realism” as if life itself isn’t already. Below is not a critique, but a sketch of how the author’s artistry speaks of itself.
Emily Hunt Kibel’s debut novel begins with Evie Cavallo, a young woman who is a graphic designer in her 20s, and is kicked out of her New York apartment as part of a city-wide housing collapse driven by a “revitalization” plan. Her boss tells her that he is also evacuated.
Evie stores her property in her Queen’s basement and flies to a rural village named Garak in Texas, contacting her distant cousin, real estate agent Terry Lang. He places her in a carriage house and helps her move to the boot-shaped building that once housed a shoe repair shop and Honky Tonk. She starts a shoe store class, becomes a “shoe doctor” in town, serving people who come to her door for help.
The house has memories, sadness, and strange remains of life. Anxiety is not from the ghost, but a quiet cry. What you can’t forget is not supernatural. It comes from what Evie lost and remains in something he can’t fix, and feels too difficult to carry around.
I know that I will never forget, not from the epic moments, but from the little unfinished things I still have. The good thing I might have done is if I wasn’t busy trying to forget or prove I’m worth it.
The most important thing is to unfold quietly. Evie’s work was gone, her property was kept far away, and arrived without family or furniture. What starts as improvisation becomes a calling of sorts. She repairs the shoes one by one, takes in what others leave, and makes it easier to stay when they leave. These actions are not dramatic, but they do not let anything fall apart. As the world fades, these small, stable gestures begin to appear like a true center of gravity.
The novel finds locksmiths with spiritual skills, “The Unknown of the Lake,” the prophecy creatures of the shoe, and the strange ones familiar to the strange ones. It reveals how public decisions take lives and how politics shape the day. Repairing a shoe is a kind of resistance, no matter how unlikely, there is a setting. It’s a skill, not a phor, but a steady hold and keeps something solid.
Gk Chesterton said the world lacks wonder, not wonder. Housing I can assure you this. The house is not troubled by spirits. It’s full of things people lived in, but it’s never named.
It’s easy to feel the center is not retained. Statie is cracked, cruelty is real, and anger is theatrical. Housing There is no solution. It only offers a different kind of strength. A shoe repair, an unexplained fish, a woman who answers the door for someone to need help. None of them fix the world. But it may prevent the worst spread.
The novel reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay about struggling before death, her life’s vulnerability, stubbornness, and refusing to resign. It shows how ordinary meanings come together, how tenacity is blessed, and how death can feel responsive.
The real question is not whether we will survive the loss, but how.
In the midst of today’s madness, we may again sing an old song – “I was once lost, but now I’ve found it” – because someone left the door open.
Notes and reading
[*] Simone Weil – Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us (2018). Weil was one of the most memorable and original thinkers of the 20th century. Some theologians oppose her language of “emptiness,” and instead emphasize the fulfillment of life, which is already filled with grace.
Emily Hunt Kibel, Residence: Novel (August 2025) – Unlike many modern literary novels that seek to redeem suffering through empathy and moral resolution, Kibel’s works resist such closure. Her artistry shows how empathy expresses passing through losses rather than redeeming them.
It’s easier to write red when you’re not experiencing hell. – Leslie Jamison, Empathy test (2014). cf. Susan Sontag, Diseases as a phor (1988). Both explore ways in which the way we talk about pain distorts it or brings us closer to the truth. Jamison writes as a recovery addict from a family shaped by bipolar disease. Sontag died in 2004 after decades of cancer.
Virginia Wolf – moth’s death. Postmortem essays collected in the death of Moth and Other Essay (1974) provide unforgettable reflections on the vulnerability and stubborn persistence of life.
Kindness – George Sanders (Syracuse University, 2013). The speech by the master of the short story is considered one of the most moving opening speeches in recent memory, delivered with Sanders’ distinctive wit and compassion. Available at NYT“George Sanders Advice to Alumni” (July 31, 2013) and on YouTube.
cf. A normal person – Sally Rooney (2020). A critically considered novel that approaches from a different angle than Kibel. The subtle drama unfolds as the class, intimacy, misunderstanding, and pretending falls reveals the question of how far it goes to save someone else.
September 2021 Atlantic Ocean The article “Sally Rooney Addresses Her Critics,” interviews with Rooney address an ongoing debate about art and politics related to both Rooney and Kibel. She argues that fiction does not need to be explicitly political for it to have political significance. It can resonate by honestly portraying everyday life and moral complexity.
Pause: God’s intimacy
Tip #221 – Dirty hands, clear eyes
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
