Dwelling - by Emily Hunt Kivel

About the Book

"A dazzling, surrealist debut novel about a young woman's quest for house and home-from New York to the Texas hinterlands and, maybe, back again"--

Book Synopsis

A dazzling, surrealist fairy tale of a young woman's quest for house and home--from New York to the Texas hinterlands and, maybe, back again.

The world is ending. It has been ending for some time. When did the ending begin? Perhaps when Evie's mother died, or when her father died soon after. Perhaps when her sister, Elena, was forcibly institutionalized in a psychiatric hippie commune in Colorado. Certainly at some point over the last year, as New York City spun down the tubes, as bedbugs and vultures descended, as apartments crumbled to the ground and no one had the time or money to fight it, or even, really, to notice.

And then, one day, the ending is complete. Every renter is evicted en masse, leaving only the landlords and owners--the demented, the aristocratic, the luckiest few. Evie--parentless, sisterless, basically friendless, underemployed--has nothing and no one. Except, she remembers, a second cousin in Texas, in a strange town called Gulluck, where nothing is as it seems.

And so, in the surreal, dislodged landscape, beyond the known world, a place of albino cicadas and gardeners and thieves, of cobblers and shoemakers and one very large fish, a place governed by mysterious logic and perhaps even miracles, Evie sets out in search of a home.

A wry and buoyant fairy tale set at the apex of the housing crisis, Emily Hunt Kivel's Dwelling takes us on a hapless hero's journey to the end of the world and back again. Madcap and magical, hilarious and existential, Dwelling holds a funhouse mirror to our moment--for anyone in search of space, belonging, and some semblance of justice.

Review Quotes

"Beautifully radical . . . . Wise on the very real-world themes of dispossession, community and material ownership... Dwelling deserves the plaudits it will surely get and more. It's hard to believe that a work so seemingly effortless and original could be a debut. Certainly, it's the most fun I've had reading in years."
--Jo Hamya, The New York Times Book Review

"Unlike any novel you will read this year, a story about millennial angst that is also a bewitching fable ... Dwelling is social commentary wrapped into a delightful allegory about identity, work, ritual and tradecraft."
--Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times

"A book of miracles masked by the mundane, an entertaining antidote to urban ennui that doubles as a survival guide for souls refusing to surrender to the superficiality of their surroundings."
--Roberto Ontiveros, Dallas Morning News

"Dwelling, Emily Hunt Kivel's kooky, endearing fairy tale of a début novel, is interested in the wobbly line between what's real and what's not . . . [and] on what could happen in a world that is deeply, invigoratingly made up. Allusions to myths, fables, and riffs on common idioms abound, many of them evocative and quite funny."
--Lora Kelley, The New Yorker

"A banger about the end of the world, philosophically, emotionally, and physically . . . I haven't stopped thinking about this since I put it down. Who could have imagined the housing crisis could be so captivating?"
-- Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful (Best Books of August)

"Full of DeLillo-style, mundane-yet-astute observations that revel in the joys and perils of modern ridiculousness ... With an air of Tom Robbins' whimsy and a touch of Joy Williams' psalms for the new world, Dwelling is lighthearted in its catastrophizing and non-prescriptive in its resolution. When the housing market gives you a shoe, make do."
--Caroline Drew, Austin Chronicle

"Kivel debuts with a rollicking and resonant modern fairy tale of real estate and its discontents... as [she] brings her weird and wonderful cast of characters to vibrant life, she never drops the incisive real-world commentary on the housing crisis and rising inequality. The result is a sui generis delight."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"A gorgeous novel of real estate, real emotions, and real warmth, with original hardware, original prose, and bursting with natural light. These pages are home to all things audacious and inventive, a dream house for the limits of your imagination--Dwelling is a daring, charming miracle."
--Hilary Leichter, author of Terrace Story

"At once philosophical, goofy, poetic and so, so smart--I would follow Emily Hunt Kivel anywhere."
--Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

"Festooned with razor-sharp observations and style, Emily Hunt Kivel's debut is a tale for our precarious moment, treating the melancholy facets of social decay, austerity, and gentrification with dazzling wit and originality. Dwelling announces the arrival of a new voice in literature who is exhilaratingly up to the task."
--Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

"Dwelling is a stunner of a novel. A new take on a classic Alice: humble seeker roving the dream map of our broken world, in search of a better one. This story is brave enough, joyous enough, and has the brilliance and heart of giants, that it already feels like the best new novel of the year."
--Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8

About the Author

Emily Hunt Kivel's short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, BOMB, New England Review, and American Short Fiction, for which she was nominated for the National Magazine Award in 2023. She is from California but now lives in Texas, where she currently serves as the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Scholar in Residence at the University of Houston. Dwelling is her first novel.