Making a house feel like home, literary edition

April 27, 2018 2:05 AM

I have a particular fiction itch that I’m having trouble scratching. I’m looking for scenes in novels or short stories where people turn an unpromising space into a cosy home out of very little. I’m not looking for fictionalised accounts of the housebuilding itself, but the small domestic details that make the space feel like home. All genres welcome.

One of my favourite scenes in my childhood reading was the Swiss Family Robinson turning a network of caves into their home. Looking back at the text now, it seems that it’s actually only a few lines (“Occasionally we amused ourselves by opening chests and packages hitherto untouched, and brought unexpected treasures to light … and by degrees our abode was fitted up like a palace, so that sometimes we wondered at ourselves, and felt as though we were strutting about in borrowed plumes.”), but this was enough for me to create an imaginary home to escape to.

Other books where I’ve found something similar: The Spare Room by Helen Garner (where she tries to make the room seem welcoming and comfortable for her sick friend); The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks (rented bedsit in the 1960s made homey by fabric made into covers, judicious application of new mugs, and shelves put up for books); Tirra Lirra By The River by Jessica Anderson (“I made white curtains and a yellow bedcover, and varnished the floor black. I was fortunate in the unpapered walls - all I had to do was kalsomine them white - and as for the massive hideous wardrobe and dressing table, I simply determined not to look at that side of the room any more than I could help … I polished the brass bedstead and painted a honey jar white and filled it with flowers from the garden. And I was delighted, when I had finished, because I had made it from so little.”)

What other books do you know that have scenes like this? My house is currently a mess of patched walls and mismatched furniture and I’m in desperate need of literary inspiration and escapism. (Oh, similar scenes with gardens also welcome!)

posted by cardinalandcrow to Writing & Language (40 answers total)

Best answer: In Barbara Comyns' novel The Juniper Tree, there are several passages describing how the protagonist makes a home for herself and her young daughter in a back-room behind an antique shop.
posted by misteraitch at 2:28 AM on April 27, 2018

In the novel Once An Eagle, the newly married protagonist and his wife move into officer quarters on an Army post in the middle of nowhere. It ain't great. However, the protagonist's wife fixes it up nicely.

I'm not 100% sure how much detail the author goes into regarding the specific steps they take to make the house better, but I think they do.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 2:38 AM on April 27, 2018

I should note that Once An Eagle is a 1,000 page long war story and that specific scene does not take up much of the book. The rest of the book is a grim, realistic anti-war story.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 2:40 AM on April 27, 2018

I recently revisited The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is pretty much exactly what you want, for the garden. (It's a children's book only in the way the Swiss Family Robinson is). There's also a surprisingly good English film version of the book from the 90sif you want to escape that way...
posted by flourpot at 3:05 AM on April 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

After certain events that I won't describe because spoilers, Merricat and Constance in We Have Always Lived in the Castle have to put their house into a condition that they can be comfortable in - which they achieve with a notable & quite moving grace. In my copy, it's from p120 onwards - the section that begins "Like children hunting for shells, or two old ladies going through dead leaves looking for pennies, we shuffled along the kitchen floor with our feet, turning over broken trash to find things which were still whole, and useful."

They have a nice garden too.
posted by rd45 at 3:09 AM on April 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Two more books aimed at children that might suit this purpose, or, at least, did for me when I was small. Mandy by Julie Andrews (yes, that Julie Andrews) has a young orphan girl slipping out of the orphanage and discovering a cottage in the woods that she claims for her own. I haven't revisited it as an adult (thought I might, now, having read this question) but my memory is that she transforms it from a dusty, abandoned place into a clean, cosy refuge with a garden and everything. The other suggestion is My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, in which the teenage protagonist runs away and makes a home in a hollowed-out tree. It's obviously a very different circumstance, but I really liked the sort of contrast of the homeyness of the tree with the fact that it's, you know, in a tree.
posted by mishafletch at 3:19 AM on April 27, 2018 [10 favorites]

Just about to suggest My side of the mountain. Box Car children has this (especially the first book) and Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons has this too, a bit. The character of Susan is motivated to set up their campsites.

Pride and Prejudice, where Charlotte is describing her new home to Elizabeth, maybe not quite what you are looking for?
posted by freethefeet at 3:25 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith

Also the Little House books. I love the scene in Little Town on the Prairie when they are spring cleaning, it's very descriptive of taking a total mess to a lovely cosy home.
posted by kitten magic at 4:13 AM on April 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

The Borrowers by Mary Norton is a fun take on this theme! Tiny people making a homey home from bits and pieces of things borrowed from humans.
posted by evilmomlady at 4:46 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The novel Thornyhold by Mary Stewart features a protagonist who inherits a cottage in the woods, which she makes her own. It might be more exploring the interior, rather than arranging it, but still satisfying in the manner you mention.
posted by Malla at 4:48 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you're not familiar, Anne of Green Gables is about a scrappy orphan girl who gets accidentally adopted by a stern brother and sister and warms up their hearts and home. The books are like 75% descriptions of domestic life and I think the earlier books (when she first arrives at Green Gables and when she's starting to making her way in the world as a student and teacher) might scratch your particular itch.

In A Little Princess, the protagonist's secret benefactor turns her drafty garret room into a cozy hideaway.
posted by yeahlikethat at 5:14 AM on April 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

We Have Always Lived In The Castle is a great suggestion. I think you’ll love it.
posted by Ted Maul at 5:17 AM on April 27, 2018

Becky Chambers' A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is great, and it's all about a small group of people turning a ramshackle spaceship into a cozy, welcoming home. There are several scenes that are exactly like what you describe in your question.
posted by googly at 5:18 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Borrowers has a lot of this!! The family is constantly resetting and constantly redefining home and how to make it.
posted by zizzle at 5:25 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, Mandy is all about this. It was only an "ok" book otherwise but should be right in your zone.

Of the Anne series mentioned above, the third one, Anne of the Island (my personal favorite!) is about when she goes to college and rents a beautiful little house with her best friends and they set up their household and live together happily for three years. The fifth one, Anne's House of Dreams is about when she gets married and the cute little home where she and her husband start their life together. Both seem on point.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:10 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I Capture the Castle has this feeling for me!
posted by sonmi at 6:10 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I LOVED Mandy as a kid. Mishafletch basically got it. I read it a few years ago to see if it still felt special to me, and everything about this little girl who works so hard and puts so much love into this little cottage to make it her own is still so wonderful. She made a box of soap flakes feel magical.

I think you'll enjoy it.
posted by phunniemee at 6:29 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's been a long time since I read it but I think there is some make do and mend homemaking in Billie Letts' Where the Heart Is.
posted by humph at 6:29 AM on April 27, 2018

Another Lucy Maude Montgomery, but further into the back catalogue, is The Blue Castle. Valancy moves out of her terrible mother's (meticulously described) terribly decorated house in her late 20s, goes to keep house for a sick friend and her father for a while, and then sets up her own place. It's also an adorable story about being yourself in spite of appearances, and I have left out the actual main drift of the plot so as to avoid spoilers.
posted by snorkmaiden at 7:04 AM on April 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

Seconding A Little Princess, which was the first thing I thought of when I read your question. Sad scary drafty attic gradually turns into a beautiful, comforting home space for Sara Crewe, an extremely deserving little heroine.
posted by invincible summer at 7:35 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Another childhood book mention:

"The Secret Summer of LEB" by Barbara Brooks Wallace

where the main character and a friend discover an abandoned house. I remember reading the scenes in the book in utter fascination at the idea of having the freedom to make a house just like I wanted it.
posted by Ginesthoi at 7:39 AM on April 27, 2018

The novel Slake's Limbo follows a teenager who lives in the New York Subway System, where he builds a home in an old electrical room along the tracks. There is particular attention to how he re-uses discarded items to decorate his space. It was a favorite of mine as a kid (and I have it on my shelves today).
posted by gyusan at 7:40 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I seem to remember the book Chocolat having some scenes like this, if not for the characters' actual apartment, then definitely for the chocolate shop they were setting up.
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:42 AM on April 27, 2018

The Wind in the Willows has a number of wonderful descriptions of rustic animal burrows.
posted by craven_morhead at 8:02 AM on April 27, 2018

Best answer: In Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, she spends a whole chapter describing how she made her tiny 1970s Greenwich Village apartment into a cozy home where she threw dinner parties. At one point she says that if Wilt Chamberlain had stood in her apartment he could have touched both opposing walls of her studio apartment at the same time. It's a lovely book and I think it would scratch your itch.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:15 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Dandelion Cottage, by Carroll Watson Rankin, is a very old-fashioned children's book, but is my favorite on this theme (and is back in print/ebook).
posted by elphaba at 8:29 AM on April 27, 2018

Lucy Maud Montgomery books have TONS of this! The Anne of Green Gables books always have lots of cozy details (especially Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of the Island, those are the ones where Anne is on her own living in college/first job quarters and has to do a lot of home-making). There's a description of eating an apple in front of a fireplace that has stuck with me since I read the book when I was 8. And the Emily series (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily's Quest) are forgotten gems of the same ilk.

(edited to add Goodreads link)
posted by assenav at 8:47 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love this in books.

Momo, by Michael Ende, has an entire town conspiring to create a home out of some rubble for an orphan girl.


Maggie-Now has a particularly touching description towards the end of how Maggie makes a home for her foster children. Betty Smith, the author, also wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which also has some wonderful "making a home in adversity" touches.

If I remember correctly, The Five Little Peppers had this feel, though there might have been more "loving each other makes it home" than "mama knitting by candlelight". But, I think there was both.

Good Wives, by Louisa May Alcott, has a description of making Meg and Laurie's house a home fairly early on.

Heidi, by Johanna Spyri, is chockablock with lovely homemaking scenes.

A lot of my other favourites for this have already been mentioned, I am eagerly watching this post!
posted by windykites at 9:17 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Does it have to be fiction? Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun is basically a whole book of this, though it is literary nonfiction.
posted by Edna Million at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2018

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. Descriptions of making a home a la turn of the century New York. Little things that poor families did to make their apartments cozy. Keeping a pot of coffee going all the time. Having a "parlor" with the best of old furniture to be had for guests. it's a lovely book, coming of age story.
posted by LaBellaStella at 10:28 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ah, thank you for all these amazing suggestions so far, they’re exactly what I was looking for (and quite a few are ones I read as a child and had forgotten about - A Little Princess! Of course!) It is pouring with rain here and I want to get hold of a couple of these and curl up under a duvet with a pot of tea, ahhhhh...
posted by cardinalandcrow at 11:04 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Sadly, this book is long out of print but A Fitting Habitation by Agnes Rothery (Dodd, Mead 1945) is exactly what you are looking for: a writer and her music professor husband set up house in several unusual, (originally) unprepossessing locations and proceed to make them homey on a budget and with great ingenuity and they fill them with friends, family and students; an amazing read.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:50 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Hey, you can get a copy at AbeBooks, do it! You won't regret it.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:53 AM on April 27, 2018

Mysterious Island by Jules Verne is actually mostly just a group of castaways industriously domesticating their little island. It's fairly old school and bro-oriented, good fun if you're in the mood for something like that.
posted by ovvl at 12:12 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love these scenes too, and many of the books mentioned are longtime favorites of mine.

Maniac Magee is a story of an orphan who tries to find home in the unlikely places he ends up living in. I'm thinking of one particularly moving scene where he is living in a baseball locker room.

Perhaps too much literal house building, but the first Little House on the Prarie has lots of cozy domestic details.

The Woman in the Wall is a lovely YA book about an introverted and shy woman who takes comfort in building a unique home for herself in the walls of a house.
posted by selene_sophia at 12:37 PM on April 27, 2018

Laurie Colwin Happy All the Time, but home is a major feature in most of her work. There is a character who has charming mis-matched china. And Home Cooking is some of the very best food writing, and much more.
posted by theora55 at 1:02 PM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover has a Bohemian version of this.

When I want to scratch the itch, 1880w-1910s women's magazines are just totally the thing. Of course I can edge all my shelves with crochet made of inexpensive thread! It will look even better once it's starched and ironed! (True, as it turns out.) Or for the other side, and not fiction, I check through Unf*&^ Your Habitat because everyone's place looks sweet when they've tidied it to their preferences.
posted by clew at 2:59 PM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I came in to say My Side of the Mountain, which has been mentioned several times, and also, oh my goodness, the first Boxcar Children book!!! It warms my heart just to remember... the refrigerator dug out of the pond under a rock, and the chipped tea cup they found at the dump.
posted by raspberrE at 3:27 PM on April 27, 2018

I have to throw in several Marlena de Blasi's books including A Thousand Days in Venice. She has a gift for describing home building in a few lush sentences, both in America and abroad.
posted by tatiana131 at 9:07 PM on April 30, 2018

Best answer: Late to this party, but there's an Australian YA not-quite-classic that really has this: Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Fay Brinsmead. A rich, independent teenager inherits half a run-down farm, with a grandfather she's never met inheriting the other half. Lots of descriptions of her painting the walls, making curtains, white-leading and sanding and polishing boards.

"She rose from her yellow-painted chair at the kitchen table and went to stand in the doorway of the transformed bathroom, feasting her eyes on it. Never had she thought that the appearance of a bathroom could give her such pleasure. The slab walls were covered with blue laminated sheets, the ceiling was painted white, and now its roughness was pleasing. The floor was painted with red-paving paint and had a large round mat of white rubber between the new white bath and new white hand-bowl. The small window was covered with blue muslin curtains. It was really a bathroom she could love."
posted by andraste at 2:46 AM on May 7, 2018