Housesitting

“An auspicious and exciting debut.” —Lorrie Moore

Fresh out of college and looking for a place in the city, Rumi stumbles into the perfect arrangement: housesitting a gorgeous townhouse in the West Village. The house belongs to her best friend's uncle and comes with a fully-stocked fridge, a menagerie of exotic pets to care for – and a writer, ten years her senior, who uses the upstairs office as his workspace.

Saif is wise and sophisticated, beautiful and well-read. But he is not entirely available. His relationship with his girlfriend Jaya is more complex than it seems, and as Rumi spends the summer housesitting her way across New York, she finds herself growing closer to the two of them – and closer, too, to the person she wants to become.

As she tries to forge a self among the accoutrements of other people, Rumi finds herself questioning what she owes to her family, her childhood in India and the competing cultures that have shaped her.

Smart, fresh and irresistibly funny, Pallavi Wakharkar’s Housesitting is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel that asks what it means to belong in a home, to belong in a country – to belong, even, to the people we love.