by Alex Carrigan
With the exchange of house keys and the changing of locks, one historical period of a home ends and another begins. Every home carries with it the most minor or major aspects of the resident’s life, but each new resident may have no idea what these elements are once they move in. Whole histories can be left unwritten if not disclosed by the realtor, but it’s when one takes time to imagine the lived experiences of one home’s residents that certain connecting threads can be found.
In her new novel Foundations, Abigail Stewart focuses on three women who all live in a house in a Dallas suburb over the decades. The first part tells of a housewife in the 1960s who deals with a lack of purpose since her husband is busy with work and she has no career, children, or ambitions beyond decorating the home. The second part is set decades later when an aging Hollywood actress moves into the house to escape her life of fame but finds it’s harder to escape the life when those in the know are looking for her. The last part is set in the 2020s and follows a woman competing in a home makeover reality TV series by renovating the house in an attempt to fulfill her dreams as a designer and influencer. Through these three women, Stewart’s novel touches on some familiar issues women face throughout the late 20th and early 21st century while showing the nuances of how these matters have changed over time.
Throughout the novel, Stewart’s writing is rich in detail and small moments as she writes about the lives of each of these women. All three women are left to form their own routines and rituals as they exist in their spaces, each one focusing on specific details and events, such as Bunny the housewife’s fixation on a neighbor with a young child or Amanda’s focus on specific items and décor to improve her chances of winning the design competition. Jessica the actress, meanwhile, is struggling to form any sort of ritual or routine due to her complete upheaval of her old life, so the most she can fixate on is hiring a neighborhood teen to mow her lawn. In each segment, these women focus on minor details or specific details because that focus allows them to experience some sort of emotional or mental stimulation.
It’s also in all three segments that each of these women are focused on manifesting some sort of ideal or experience. Bunny becomes friends with a librarian who introduces her to spiritualism because the hope of communicating with the dead in a séance offers her the chance to feel extraordinary or connected to someone, even if they’re deceased. Jessica achieved what many people dreamed of, but now she’s trying to manifest a life of her own choosing or of her own decision, having had so much of it decided for her. Amanda, meanwhile, is the most driven to manifestation, as she’s literally creating an ideal home and spurring her ambitions in a national platform. Stewart’s heroines are all at different stages of manifestation, whether its barely starting, dependent on others to springboard them, or trying to take charge of it themselves.
Throughout all of this, Foundations is mostly interested in providing a single snapshot of these women’s histories as they attempt to assert themselves in this single space. There are echoes of each woman in the other stories, such as Bunny’s eventual fate being spoken of as a dirty secret in Jessica’s story, or the end of Jessica’s stay providing a bit of color to Amanda’s TV storyline. These women may only know each other through their residence in the home or their unnoticed touches on the avocado colored formica that spends over sixty years in the home, but it’s the emotional care put into every inch of the home while they were there that persists. They assigned meaning to each object and to themselves as they existed there, and in each of their cases, whether they remained or left the home was ultimately the result of them deciding that they could let it go or that they could be more than just a resident there.
Foundations is a layered collection of women’s lives in a single home, but it speaks to how we give meaning to our homes and how that meaning can lead to an internal redesign of ambition and autonomy. The women of Stewart’s novel are continually in flux as they move furniture or change their routines in the house, but each is ultimately looking for a way to change themselves or find some meaning. It’s something that can speak to the reader’s appreciation for their own living spaces, and whether or not they can see the filled or empty space as representative of them in that time in their lives.
Alex Carrigan (he/him; @carriganak) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. His debut poetry chapbook, ‘May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry’ (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), was longlisted for Perennial Press‘ 2022 Chapbook Awards. He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), ‘Stories About Penises’ (Guts Publishing, 2019), and more.
