The Bathtub Book Club: Open House–A Life in Thirty-Two Moves
The book: Open House: A Life in Thirty-Two Moves by Jane Christmas (Harper Collins Canada, 2020)
The beer: Stratford, Ontario’s Jobsite Brewing Co.’s 2×4 Cream Ale, dedicated to the most common size of lumber used in the construction industry. Some crunchy facts: Founders Dave Oldenburger and Phil Buhler worked together in construction for nearly a decade. They hatched their brewery plan during a coffee break, bought an old lumber yard, demo’d and reno’d it and moved from sawing logs to lagers.
The who: HGTV junkies, anyone who has built an IKEA bookcase, everyone who has moved more than once, those who comb MLS listings like Tinder and especially those who feel out of sorts if they haven’t been to a Home Depot or Home Hardware twice a week. For those who hear the word “bear” and think “Behr” and debate the merit of Shoelace over White Flour white paint.
The part you’ve been waiting for: My wife and I have moved 32 times–combined. Jane Christmas has achieved the same feat independently and still can’t shake the momentum. I found instant kinship. While Christmas looked at 60 homes in England’s “stonking-hot” 2017 market, Kim and I prowled through 88 (as told in run-on sentence detail in my memoir, Free to a Good Home: With Room for Improvement) in the equally stonking Canadian real estate trenches. But who’s counting? We were. Jane was.
Christmas candidly admits that her affection for property shows is a “gateway drug to a full-on renovation.” Along for the ride without control of the steering wheel is the “The Husband” of seven years (who she serendipitously met on the Camino de Santiago. *It should be Alanis-Morissette-ironic noted that The Husband is the sole driver in England as Christmas will have no part of the crazed, hamster tunnel roadways). Though they “arrived late in life to one another’s orbit,” their cosmic connection seems necessary in that yin and yang (gin and yang?) kind of way. Christmas is energized when their home looks like sacs of flour have been detonated. She finds hypnotic comfort in wallpaper removal. Her husband finds solace in making tea and waiting for the drywall dust to settle.
Of course, this memoir goes many wallpaper layers deep in true Jane Christmas style. The veneer is removed early on and there’s admission that the chronic restoration she seeks in houses is also an essential tool in the redesign of her emotional scaffolding.
The throwbacks to her childhood are difficult to read. They’ll sit sideways in your throat. Her mother is far from the cuddly sort, eager to bake cookies and play in the sandbox. Instead, she wonders aloud why her daughter is so ugly and awkward. Her father attempts suicide on a few occasions—and disclosures like this, void of whitewashing or paint thinner, demonstrate how Christmas was responsible for building her very own foundation long ago.
It’s fitting that her sense of a “private homecoming” was felt on her first visit to England at age 16. The future Husband coincidentally resided there and when push came to love-shove, Christmas was happy to pack up her Canadian chapter and have a go at it in Bristol. Quasi Under the Tuscan Sun but more like, Under the Bristol Brelly. She is well-versed in disruption, rebuilding and drywall dust. The Husband, on the flip side, nervously makes tea as his wife transforms their Victorian terrace into something more invigorating (for now).
The undercurrent is subtle but undeniable. Open House is all about belonging and how that fluid concept really has no fixed address. Christmas believes there is an alchemical formula to the homes that speak to us. In her case, she has a lot of homes speaking to her.
Her memoir is about much more than moving. It pauses at the important bits between the movement. Like, The Friendly Giant (yes, the REAL Friendly Giant) read her a bedtime story as a kid—in her own bed! There are unnerving ghost stories that will send prickles of goosebumps across your skin. The British real estate playbook will make your eyeballs fall out their sockets. Readers will learn a good dose of Brit lexicon too: sparkies, chippies and brickies are not types of candy that you buy at the corner store (they are pet names for the tradesfolk). There are historical bites and not-so-historical surprises like this: In 2010, there were 40,000 homes that still had outdoor loos in Britain.
Christmas blends Dynasty references, gritty relationship dynamics, not-so-fuzzy childhood memories, Meg Ryan’s brownstone in You’ve Got Mail and bitchings about space-hog radiators in one smooth-as-Yorkshire-pudding go. Her turns of phrase will bring several smiles, like the shower that “has all the pressure of a royal handshake.”
You’ll either be inspired to move—or completely daunted and forever terrified by Open House. I fall on the inspired side of her fence. Even if the only cardboard box in your future midst contains a pizza, this memoir dazzles with spunk and resilience. I’ll bet you a pizza that you drift off and consider life somewhere else.
If you love Open House, check these moving books:
I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann
Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain by Chris Stewart
Open House by Elizabeth Berg
More shameless promotion: Jane Christmas wrote the foreword for my upcoming memoir, Trail Mix: 920km on the Camino de Santiago (insert thrills and chills here). Her account, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela is about moving in a different sense but a must if you love her voice (which you will). You should also read The Pelee Project: One Woman’s Escape from Urban Madness. If you’ve entertained fantasies of island life, her sabbatical on Pelee Island will act like an intravenous.