There's a certain style in literature to take a home/building/structure and give it life.
Painful, breathing, inescapable life.
Be it horribly haunted, saturated by a gathering of stranded souls, or simply emanating a feeling of being 'alive'.
It intervenes in the characters' lives, nudging, guiding, shoving them in a direction they wouldn't have necessarily taken without its presence.
It quakes, creaks and moans with life and these are the stories i love.
I couldn't tell you specifically why, there are just certain quirks in literature that compel and comfort me.
Sentient architecture is one of them.
If i could devour every single story like this, i would, with abandon.
But tracking them down is proving impossible.
It's not exactly an easy thing to Google and i'm relying on others to have a previously vested interest in this particular narrative style.
So far, no such luck.
Thus, a list.
A list of stories i've read and loved and all have one thing in common: a sentient home.
Homes with an obvious sentience:
Homes with a subtle sentience:
Homes that create a feeling of sentience without there necessarily being any:
Just looking at all these makes me long for more.
That's one hell of a list and hopefully it will grow.
I've already had a recommendation from the family in the form of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and with any luck there'll be more to come.
How many parts of my body can i cross for literary luck?
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