How to Sell a Haunted House

“‘I love you,’ her mom said without opening her eyes. Louise froze. ‘I know,’ she said after a moment. ‘No,’ her mom said, ‘you don’t.’ Louise waited for her to add something, but her mom’s breathing deepened, got regular, and turned into a snore. Louise continued into the kitchen. Had she overheard half of a dream conversation? Or did her mom mean Louise didn’t know she loved her? Or how much she loved her? Or she wouldn’t understand how much her mom loved her until she had a daughter of her own?”

Nancy, Louise’s mom, is visiting after she finds out Louise is pregnant. This sort of vague communication is typical of Nancy and of Louise’s entire family. Louise’s longing to understand her mother’s love for her reflects one of her main conflicts in the novel: the resentment and estrangement she has long felt with her family due to her mother’s favoritism of Mark. This scene reflects the theme The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships.

“Seeing it with fresh eyes, Louise saw it as it was, not dressed in its history and associations. Their little single-story brick rancher had been fine when their grandparents built it in 1951, but as the years passed, the houses around them added additions and screened-in back porches and white coats of paint over their bricks and glossy coats of black paint over their shutters, and every other house got bigger and more expensive while theirs turned into the shabbiest house on the block.”

Louise has returned home for the first time in years and is seeing her childhood home with adult eyes. The contrast between her perception when she was younger and now is heightened further by the way the neighborhood has changed over the years. This quote highlights the way that Louise’s relationship with her family is frozen in time—the result of distance and The Power of Secrets between all of the family members, but especially between Louise and Mark.

“The Mark in front of her had a receding hairline and his gut had gotten bigger since the last time she’d seen him. He wore a King Missile T-shirt he’d had in high school, but it couldn’t be the same one even though it was dirty enough to be, and he wore a flannel she thought he’d owned then, too. The biggest difference from the Mark in her memory were his terrible tattoos.”

Louise is seeing Mark for the first time in years. He is dressed in the same clothing he wore in high school, reinforcing her idea that he hasn’t changed and has never grown up.