The Call is Coming from Inside the House : Essays

In a series of dispatches, McOuat explores with humour and pathos a period of her life spent living in a haunted house under renovation. She stirs together the ingredients required to conjure an unsettled spirit: motherhood, grief, the supernatural, ruminating on the past, near-miss moments, truth denied, and the unexplained moments in life that leave you haunted. Through her own life experiences, various tall tales, urban myths, and true crime stories, McOuat uncovers how as a mother, woman, and ''invisible Femme'' she has been persistently asked to question her own reality, truth, and intentions. This induced a special kind of self-violence - a mistrust of her own mind. To finally move on to a better place she will have to first face the frightening experiences from her past, forgive herself for failing to advocate for herself, and exorcise a stubborn attachment to a phantom heteronormative nuclear family structure.