Three Rooms by Jo Hamya. Anyone read it?

[Noonado]

… And if so, what did you think?

I finished it yesterday, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve missed the point. I was sucked in by the blurb which promised “a beautiful, furious encapsulation of Generation Rent” and it really wasn’t!

Have I just turned into a reactionary old Tory in my middle age, or was anyone else irritated that the narrator seems surprised and resentful that she has to live in temporary house shares while working in low-paid jobs in academia and the media in her early 20s?

On the plus side, it was beautifully written and an interesting snapshot of a period of political upheaval, but I feel that as “a novel about the danger of withholding capital, principally domestic and financial” (from the author’s note) it doesn’t really succeed.

was anyone else irritated that the narrator seems surprised and resentful that she has to live in temporary house shares while working in low-paid jobs in academia and the media in her early 20s?

Yes! Completely this. She seemed to expect immediate possession of the assets and lifestyle that some (fortunate) individuals acquire over decades of work and was shocked that it wasn't all immediately handed to her in recognition of her brilliance.

I was even more scathing than you, in that I didn't even like the writing - it's been a while, but I seem to remember finding it sub-Virginia Woolf.

And even when older characters (narrator’s mum, flatmate’s mum, art editor) point out that they had to live with parents / in shared housing / grift to get where they are, the narrator still insists that it’s not fair, which made me wonder if Hamya intends her to seem deluded and entitled. But the author’s note I quoted above suggests otherwise, which is why I wondered if I was missing something.

It’s a shame, because I think the housing crisis and the extent to which millennials and gen z have been screwed over is an important subject and definitely worth writing about, which is why I picked up the book based on its blurb.

Totally agree, Noonado - there are genuine issues around inter-generational fairness, but this does not lay them bare.