Houses of Prominent Men - Lydia Unsworth

Houses of Prominent Men

“In extended vignettes of scalpel-like precision, Unsworth contemplates famous men, contrasting them with prosaic day-to-day encounters of the speaker of the poems. Situating us in or near their houses (there are a few lockouts), we can ask what it means to inhabit and to be absent, and what traces of ourselves we leave behind. ‘Sometimes it’s more fun to press your head against a window than be admitted’ she says, in ‘Derek Jarman’s House’, and this is how I feel about these poems – as if I have pressed my head against them, expecting to be admitted to the past but instead being gifted an oblique window on the present. Impacting and insightful, this collection speaks much more to the fleeting nature of our own modern existence than it does the tired histories of the men whose names rest within it.”

Annie Brechin

“One day, all the houses of notable men will be dismantled, loaded on to the backs of trucks and placed together to form a town consisting only of notable men’s dwellings. And this town shall have a mayor, and that mayor will be Lydia Unsworth. In this incredibly lovely pocket-sized volume, Unsworth visits several properties where famous men lived, and tells us all about them. Or doesn’t. Because it’s more than that. When Unsworth enters one of these houses she takes herself and the whole world with her, and everything seems to be different when it comes out at the other end. Unsworth’s family and friends, and her own thoughts and fears, continually intrude on the house-visiting experience. Her children do push-ups on the floor in Oscar Wilde’s house; a woman shuffles about in the bins behind Thomas Mann’s. At Ozzy Osbourne’s house, a friend texts asking for a screenshot of her Sainsbury’s loyalty card. In Kraków, Pope socks are purchased. A key question posed by this book is this: When do you live somewhere? How long does it need to be? The answer has to be – you know you’ve stayed somewhere long enough when Lydia Unsworth visits the property after you are dead. Cool, funny, compassionate, moving, Unsworth conveys the weight of the world with the lightest of touches with these brilliant, hilarious, profound, and intensely personal vignettes.”

David Gaffney