Interview Louise Candlish
Louise Candlish had written 11 novels before her award-winning Our House and, she reveals, was on the cusp of putting down her pen because her writing career looked to have stalled...
HOUSE PARTY
Text Natasha Onwuemezi L 10
ouise Candlish was on the cusp of giving up her novel- writing career when she got the idea for Our House. “It’s not like I had been writing for 100 years, but this was my 12th book and I had poured
my heart and soul into every one of them,” she says. “I began in 2003 and the years can feel quite long when you’re the [writer] that isn’t getting any attention or budget, and booksellers aren’t stocking your books. Then I had the idea for Our House and it felt really exciting, right from the moment of conception. It kept on building and I thought, ‘OK, I’ll do one more, and then I’ll go out—and even if no one likes it, I’ll go out on what I consider to be my best book.” Dubbed a “property-porn thriller”
by some critics—Candlish herself prefers the term “property noir”—the novel was borne out of Candlish’s self-proclaimed “obsession” with property. “I’m one of those people who’s always on Rightmove,” she says. “Then, one day, I saw an article on the Daily Mail website about a woman whose house was stolen from her by a criminal gang, and honestly it would make your hair curl. It just stood out as the absolute epitome of middle-class agony.”
CLOSE TO HOME Candlish says she thought the idea would be “so much more tense” if it was someone the victim knew who had committed the crime. “Once I’d made that leap, it was easy to see how an estranged couple would still have access to each other’s documents, as they are still sharing a house.”The book follows a woman who comes home one day to find strangers moving into her house. Coupled with that, her husband and two children have disappeared. A great deal of the book’s market-
ing latched onto the shocking last line, which completely changes the game, but did Candlish know
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