The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

The Stager by Susan Coll

July 17, 2015

Given that we’re still in the midst of our home remodel I thought it appropriate to re-publish this review The Stager, a book I loved from 2014. It’s just been released in paperback and is a hilarious satire about the world of home staging and so much more. This time last year we were still looking for a house in Seattle so this novel gave me much needed laughs. Now that we’re living in our unfinished home, I need a satire about remodeling. Maybe something called The Contractor?!

 

stagerThe Stager by Susan Coll
Published by Sarah Crichton Books
Genres: Debut, Fiction, Contemporary, Satire, Humor
four-stars
Amazon

As the real estate market appears to be rebounding it has given birth to an entire new industry—staging. And you know an industry has arrived when it makes its debut into fiction. Susan Coll’s new novel The Stager is about a quirky stager, who remains nameless for much of the novel (which is not surprising as these people slip into your home, remove everything that is yours and replace it with anonymous furnishings), but becomes an integral part of the main family’s life. They need to sell their house fast as the wife has been promoted into a new high level position in London and they’ve already purchased a house there. Unfortunately, a psychotic rabbit, a recalcitrant child, and a high maintenance husband are making the move especially difficult.

Bella is the uber-achieving, Hermes-bag-owning executive in this drama and yet, despite being the only character with any control she is the only one with no voice. We hear the story extensively from her husband Lars and her daughter Elsa and then later from the stager Eve, but Bella, the centerpiece of all this narrative never speaks on her own behalf. She apparently controls all and either feels no need to give her side of the story or is prevented from doing so. Either way, it makes the retelling of this group’s history wildly inventive and amusing.

Coll designs two of the narrators, Lars and Elsa, as sources of perpetual annoyance so well that I grind my teeth when they speak. Once known as a major tennis star, Lars has now lapsed into obesity and drug abuse and can hardly leave the house or bathe. And yet, he manages to hold onto the tiny power of his many illnesses to get what he wants. When Bella suggests a chandelier for their new home rather than punching two holes in the roof for the skylights he wants he whines, “It needs to be natural light, Bella. I think you know that. Artificial light offers no nourishment.”

As the novel progresses the massive doses of painkillers, anti-depressants, and anxiety meds he takes lead him to believe he can read the minds of others and that a rabbit is speaking to him. One who seems to truly understand his pain:

“It’s Bella’s story. That’s the problem! You’re living life on her terms. You do everything she says. And you even believe her version of events. Like, she’s probably even put some sort of happy spin on the current situation. You get all of ten percent fidelity out of her, yet all she has to do is put out a press release with her own version of the story and then she controls the narrative.”  

Elsa is everyone’s worst nightmare of an only child—precocious and so solidly certain of her inalienable right to anything and everything she wants that there are no limits to what she will do to get it. Can’t find the Pop Tarts in the kitchen newly cleaned by the stager? Pull everything out of every cupboard, then change your mind, and leave. Want your bedroom to have a huge rabbit painted on the wall despite the stager saying it was not a good idea? Get the paint yourself, spill it, then walk in it and on your white carpet, and again, leave. She is also the proud owner of Dominique, the rabbit, who is apparently demented and wants to return to the wild so he runs away at every opportunity but not before chewing holes in the carpet, throwing up, climbing the drapes, and slashing holes in velvet upholstery with his claws.

Eve is the hapless stager and initially remains as innocuous as the furnishings she tries to set up in the Jorgenson house and deal with a pre-middle school child who thinks the world revolves around her. What slowly becomes apparent is that Eve is not unknown to the Jorgensons—most specifically to Bella. In fact, they go back many years to when they were both financial journalists and good friends. And then they were not and now Eve wants to set the record straight; all while maintaining her professional ethics and doing her best to ready their house for sale.

The Stager is sly and snarky and Coll ties the story together like a good room, adding pieces here and there to fill in the gaps between the characters. It is no coincidence that Eve takes this job but her rationale for doing so is a bit off. Regardless, it all leads to a funny conclusion in this satire about real estate, friendship, money and life and if Coll leaves some portions of the novel askew, in a way a stager would find off-putting, they are not enough to ruin the overall appeal of the story. As a buyer I’m sold.

 

four-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 4 Star Books
  • By Susan Coll
park avenue
Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen
unknown americans
The Book of Unknown Americans
five best
Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore
Imagine Me Gone
monday
It’s Monday, July 9th: What Are You Reading?
Billy lynn
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
secret
The Secret Keeper
divines
The Divines: A Novel
secrets
The Secrets We Kept
heiresses
The Heiresses
lucky boy
Lucky Boy: A Novel
bone clocks
The Bone Clocks
covenant
The Covenant of Water
night guest
The Night Guest
nonfiction
Nonfiction November 2017: Fiction Nonfiction Pairings
stager
The Stager: A Novel
Fun Summer Reading
september
September Reading Wrap-Up

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, family, humor, satire

Comments

  1. Sarah's Book Shelves says

    July 17, 2015 at 4:46 am

    Ha! This one sounds funny! I love a good satire and I definitely haven’t come across one starring a “stager” before. What they do does have a certain level of creepy, though!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Bookshop

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2023

Copyright © 2023 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in