The titular abode of Sian Northey’s This House (2011, tr: Susan Walton, 2024) is Nant yr Aur, a solitary cottage somewhere in rural North Wales. As a young girl, Anna Morris was fascinated by the place, though she only ever got to see inside in her thirties when, by chance, the door was unlocked. Now she’s in her late fifties, both its owner and solitary resident. However, it wasn’t always that way as she got married to Ioan Gwilym, who was in residence that day over twenty years before, and together they had a son, Dylan.

When the novel opens, Anna has discharged herself from hospital after a fall (“Whisky was a new habit.”) into the comfort of Nant yr Aur. Her leg is in plaster and her mobility is somewhat hampered. Even though she sees herself as independent (“She didn’t need anybody”) she relies on the assistance of elderly friend, Emyr, who runs errands on her behalf, and his wife, Dora. It would be fair to say that little happens in This House because much of the events have already occurred. This is a quiet novel of processing the past to break out of the present.

Home from hospital Anna is immediately “feeling the house relax around her” but like the plaster cast on her leg, it’s really a restraint, only emotional. Nant yr Aur is a house haunted by its past, a place where grief is contained within its walls. There are offers to buy the house, although selling up is not worth consideration. One potential buyer, a young man called Siôn, seems able to slip under Anna’s usual defences, perhaps because the memories she’s holding on to are projectable onto him.

With a slim cast, each with their own secrets and lives beyond the house, Northey’s story is a relatively straightforward and sensitively drawn affair about breaking out from the routines of grief and grasping what life is left. It’s nicely observed, with time loss, hazy memories, and everyday tasks standing in for purpose. All as one may expect when an idyllic love story slips into a personal nightmare which gets more devastating as long-buried revelations are outed. But the book is not without some optimism. Once Anna walked into this house and chose to stay, but doors can work both ways.