Review: “This House is Not For Sale” Shows What Goes Into Making a House

Courtney Burke // Blog Writer

This House is Not For Sale by E.C. Osondu
HarperCollins | February 3, 2015
192 pages
Barnes & Noble | HarperCollins

“When we asked Grandpa how the house we all called the Family House came into existence, this was the story he told us.”

This is the line that begins E.C. Osondu’s novel This House is Not For Sale, and although many different narratives follow – tracking the various individuals that make up the extended family of the house – they all work together to form the folklore of a family.

This House is Not For Sale takes place in a large house in an unspecified country in Africa, at an undetermined time (although references such as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom provide some hits), and is told by an unnamed narrator (seemingly a young male member of the family).  Instead of detracting, this ambiguity only adds to the sense of fable throughout a story intricately woven with traces of magic and superstition. Countless uncles, aunts, cousins, and servants reside in this house; Grandpa, the leader of the house, is an omnipresent and authoritative figure. Many of the people who live there do so because they or their parents owe Grandpa money – they stay at the house and work for him in his many shops to pay these debts off.

From the beginning, a melancholy air hangs over the story. Each chapter tells a different character’s story, dealing with dark circumstances such as multiple miscarriages, murders, kidnappings, and shady dealings. There’s the story of Tata Mirror, a woman whose loss of her three babies has led her to become a witch catcher, Uncle Aya, who helps lead The End of the World Ministry (September 1, which is the projected end-of-the-earth date, comes and goes without more than a rainstorm), and an uncle nicknamed Gramaphone who plugs his ears with cotton to avoid hearing music. A touch of dark humor pervades all of the stories no matter how bleak, although as the novel goes on, the stories – and the fate of the house – grow grimmer.

One story that stands out as the most amusing is of the young cousin Ibe, a classic case of a young kid who thinks he knows everything. His claims about the world range from the real to the ridiculous, and this is the story in which the character of the narrator is revealed the most as well, somewhat in awe of everything Ibe knows, but also skeptical. As the stories went on and continued to grow darker, I kept hoping for a lighter touch like Ibe’s antics to come back in, but was disappointed. The book is a short read, and the way the chapters are written make it more of a collection of short stories held together by a theme. This only adds to the fable-like quality of the stories, but it does make the descriptor of a “novel” somewhat misleading.

While the chapters all deal with separate family members, a group of unidentified voices from the village nearby the Family House chatters throughout the whole book. As scandalous subjects emerge from the house – from witchcraft to infidelity to an arranged marriage of two women in the town – these voices weave in and out of the story, gossiping, judging, and defending the characters. This community becomes the true narrator of the story, forming the folklore of the rise and fall of Grandpa’s large house. Ultimately, through the multifaceted characters, grim circumstances, and energetic tone, Osondu weaves a darkly captivating fable of this house’s family.