This is a promising first novel and Alex Hourston creates a very believable and sympathetic main character in Maggie. Her back story is cleverly withheld to provide a more dramatic conclusion although I found the final revelations somewhat underwhelming. Her growing relationship with asylum seeker, Anja, is deftly handled and touching when linked to Maggie's own experiences with her daughters.
The main weakness in the novel for me was the writing style which I can best describe as staccato. Lots of short sentences or longer ones broken into comma divided clauses. It made for awkward reading and I found myself frequently having to re-read sentences to make sense of them. For the same reason, much of the dialogue came across as stilted and unconvincing. ( )

In My House – A Bit of a Moral Maze

In My House is the debut novel from Alex Hourston is an interesting book full of some excellent observations and in a way rather reflective of modern life of an older woman who befriends someone much younger than themselves. It is also a welcome change to have an older female lead character than the fascination with a more youthful one.

Maggie Benson is a complex person, not your run of the mill single older woman with dog, she is divorces, lives alone except for her dog; and is estranged from her daughter. We learn that she has few people she can really call friends more like associates, she works from home and rarely does anything really interesting. She loves her solitude being able to shut the world out of her life once she has stepped through her front door. She likes to go on walking holidays that usually are guided but she can be pretty anonymous on them.

It is as she is passing through Gatwick Airport that she does something to help a young girl who is being trafficked in to the country and so begins the moral maze. It is through the Victim Support officer that she meets Anja and they develop an unlikely relationship, and not the sort you would normally expect. Anja has a way of peeling back the layers of Maggie’s life and getting her to re-examine her own life and the lies, betrayal and avoidance that takes place and their subsequent consequences.

Written in the first person the reader is often thrown off somewhat and is made to feel uneasy especially about some aspects of another’s life and decisions. It is like being a voyeur at a party but not everything is going to the plan you expect and there are plenty of surprises as you read on. In My House is a compelling debut which shows a bright future for the author Alex Hourston and I am sure there is something of Maggie in all of us. ( )

This is quite a hard book for me to review. On the whole I did enjoy it but I didn't really feel like I ever truly connected with it. Margaret Benson, a 57 year old woman on her way back from a walking holiday, meets the eye of Anja in a mirror at the airport. When Anja mouths "help me" Margaret steps in and saves her from being trafficked. The two women become quite close and we learn about Margaret's life as she narrates the book, including why she is so worried about the tiny bit of press her good deed receives.

Margaret is certainly an interesting character but for some reason her story didn't completely interest me. I have to say that when I was able to read this book in large chunks it flowed a lot better for me and I think that's because I needed to absorb myself in Margaret's story. The author writes well although has a rather odd habit of putting full stops in the middle of a sentence. It's a minor thing but one which puzzled me a bit. I liked the book overall - a very interesting storyline. ( )