Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller
Open House is a delightful novella length story about a realtor in New York tasked with selling her uncle’s townhouse and also an abandoned lot which is used by the locals as a community garden, and the man she meets at the garden who doesn’t want her to sell it to the developers who are the target market.
Magda Ferrer is a nearly 30-year-old Afro-Latinx woman who is struggling to find her place. She’s the youngest of the family by a long way and her mother and elder sisters tend to baby her. She wants desperately to be seen and treated as an adult and because of that, has hidden some things from her family which would explain some of her decision-making and how she came to work in real estate. Labouring under crippling student debt, Magda is very keen to sell her uncle’s house on “Striver’s Row” in Harlem but he’s basically the client from hell, constantly beginning new renovations and making outrageous demands of prospective buyers. Many realtors have gone before Magda and failed. But, if Magda can pull this off, the commission will put a dent in her debt so she’s motivated.
She’s less keen about her boss letting her know that she will be the point person on selling the vacant lot. She’s quite charmed by the community garden and sympathetic to the folks who are using the space. However, she has a job to do and, after all, the people using the space to grow their vegetables are not the owners of the land. The owner is perfectly within her rights to sell if she wants to and it is also perfectly okay for her to try and maximise the profit from that sale.
Tyson Yang is a Taiwanese-American CPA in New York. He kind of stumbled into the garden community and for a lot of the book, resists the idea that he’s actually a part of it. After his mother died of cancer, his father moved back to Taiwan to get away from his memories, leaving Tyson and his sister, Jenny, to cope alone. Sure, they were adults but they could still have used their dad to be around for them. When his mother died, Tyson effectively lost his dad too. Tyson is reluctant to make new connections because everyone seems to leave him. Even Jenny is now moving away to Portland to pursue her career as a chef. He doesn’t want the garden to go and this of course, puts him in opposition to Magda.
But there is undeniable chemistry between Ty and Magda and despite their apparently opposite sides of the real estate divide, they make a connection. Each can see the other in ways those they love and who love them don’t and it’s refreshing and oh-so-tempting.
Magda doesn’t feel she has time for a relationship even if Tyson wasn’t actively against her selling the garden and Tyson, while open to a relationship with Magda, won’t risk his heart if she’s not prepared to commit. Besides, maybe he should move with Jenny. She’s all he has left after all, and he can be an accountant anywhere.
What I enjoyed most about the book was that each protagonist had good reasons for their respective positions and neither was a bad person or trying to do something immoral or mean. The conflict between them was real but it wasn’t based on anything which would make it difficult for me to root for their HEA.
Both Magda and Tyson were genuinely nice people who were struggling with family issues and, in Tyson’s case, grief, and their motivations and actions made sense and fit their characters. They were easy to like and to wish good things for.
The novella length of the story suited the conflict and I enjoyed how the final resolution worked out. I liked also the parallels between Tyson’s grief and that of Uncle Byron.
The narration, by Emily Woo Zeller, was very good. I was a little curious about a decision she made with Tyson’s characterisation. Tyson was presented as a man who did not want to form friendships and connections because of his past disappointments. He was quite solitary and self-contained apart from his relationship with Jenny. Or, at least, that’s how he saw himself. In reality he was in the thick of the garden community. Ms. Zeller’s voice for him was mostly flat in affect and not always in keeping with the cues suggested by the tones of the people he was interacting with, particularly in the earlier parts of the book – perhaps signalling that he is on the Autism spectrum? However, I’m not sure there was support for that in the text. I’m not sure there wasn’t either but I think Tyson’s behaviours were sufficiently explained by his personal circumstances alone. In my head, his affect could easily have been quite different than the way he was portrayed by Ms. Zeller. I wonder if, had I read the book with my eyes, whether I’d have thought Tyson was (possibly) autistic? I don’t think I would have. Whatever is the case, I liked Tyson very much.
I don’t know whether Ms. Zeller read Tyson differently or whether she had inside knowledge from the author about his character. My grade for the narration would be the same either way.
Magda was sympathetic, stretched and stressed and, possibly(?) unlike Tyson, very consistently portrayed with how she was presented in the text.
All of the secondary and tertiary characters in the story leapt off the page and I think my experience of them was in large part to the colour and movement Ms. Woo Zeller brought to them in her performance.
Open House had a lovely hopeful HFN ending which suited the shorter length of the audiobook and I was completely charmed by it.
Kaetrin
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