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Intrigue, desire … and awful landlords: why queer authors are suddenly writing about houses

A settled domestic life can seem like a pipe dream for some LGBTQ+ writers, especially in the midst of a housing crisis. Yet novelists such as Booker nominated Yael van der Wouden are finding that inspiration begins at home

‘I think it’s an investigation of belonging – one that we didn’t have a literal space for before.”

I’m on the phone with the novelist Yael van der Wouden, conferring with her about a recent trend in LGBTQ+ writing: a preoccupation with houses. I figured she would be a good person to talk to because her new, Booker-nominated novel The Safekeep centres on a lonely old house in the Dutch countryside that suddenly, one summer, is flooded with queer desire and intrigue. The problem is that the Booker-nominated author is talking to me in transit, touring Europe, at this moment on a train rattling across northern Italy. Reader, witness the irony of our discussing ideas of rootedness and belonging as Van der Wouden keeps getting ousted from her seat. She says she’ll have to call me back.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/wE06rJ4
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