Rebecca's Reviews > Housebreaking

This tightly crafted novel of adultery in dysfunctional suburbia is somewhat reminiscent of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children or the movie Far from Heaven, but with less memorable characters and storyline overall. The strategy of revisiting the same events of the late summer and fall of 2007 from different characters’ perspectives makes it feel slightly repetitive and claustrophobic.

I liked the dual meaning of the title – it’s a play on words a bit like Broken Homes and Gardens – though Pope might have taken it a bit further by turning one of the two central dogs into a puppy who keeps having accidents in the house (judging by the appealing cover image, I assumed this would be the case).

My favorite touches were the comical dialogue between a handful of old folks and a description of the cookie-cutter buildings in the Connecticut suburbs: “all the little houses, lined up like cereal boxes on a shelf. They all looked the same, probably were the same design, inside and out, built by the same hand sometime in the black-and-white 1950s.”

Related reading: Want Not by Jonathan Miles also revolves around Thanksgiving 2007.