Gone Girl Goes House Hunting
Books and Bakes: “Best Offer Wins” takes a darkly comedic journey through the Washington real estate market
Books & Bakes is my read-a-thon raising money for Cake4Kids, an organization that provides birthday cakes to underserved and at-risk children. Every week through Labor Day, I’ll be posting reviews and round-ups of what I’ve read and a preview of what I’m reading. Make your pledge here!
Any real estate agent who’s worked on more than a handful of home sales will have at least one horror story to tell. Usually more.
Mine aren’t too horrifying, as these things go, and generally involve unexpected people behaving strangely. A client and I went to one showing in D.C. where the condo’s occupant was at home — already a red flag — and once we were inside I clocked that he was likely on hour thirty-seven of a seventy-two-hour meth binge. I still showed the condo — you don’t pass up a great location because of a tweaked-out twink — but I made sure to place myself between my client and him at all times.
I’ve had an open house visitor slowly reveal themself to be a stalker. I’ve walked clients through a stunning home only to go into the basement and find enough mold to launch a season of The Last of Us. I have not found anyone hiding in the basement but my mentor certainly did. And a truly surprising number of agents have accidentally surprised people who are naked and/or having sex.
That last one is an indicator that people selling their homes really need to pay attention to their calendar notifications.
I’m lucky that the one horror story I don’t have is a nightmare client. I’m not saying that just to be nice. Anyone can be a little difficult at times when they’re borrowing three-quarters of a million to buy their “starter home” — that’s human nature. Navigating that in a way that preserves their sanity is just part of my job.
Given the absolute cut-throat world of the real estate market in the DMV over the past few years I’m surprised more buyer clients haven’t gone completely insane after losing their fifth or sixth or seventh dream home to yet another all-cash, no-contingencies offer. And what if someone did lose their mind?
That’s the question posed by Marisa Kashino’s novel Best Offer Wins, a very dark comedy about one woman’s increasingly wild attempts to purchase her dream home just across the District line in a tony Maryland suburb.
Margo Miyake is desperate to get out of the U Street one-bedroom she and her husband, Ian, rented as a temporary residence after selling their D.C. townhouse to finance a suburban single-family house. Problem is, they’ve lost again and again as every house they see come on the market is inundated with twenty or more offers they can’t compete with. Months have passed and the pressure is mounting on Margo and her marriage.
When she receives a tip that a gorgeously remodeled colonial will be coming on the market soon, Margo hatches a plan to get to know the owners so she can buy the house before it even goes on sale. If that sounds like a bad plan, it’s because it is. But Margo has a single-minded vision for her future: a beautiful home, a successful career, a trophy husband, and a newborn baby.
It’s no surprise that there’s underlying trauma driving Margo’s increasingly unhinged efforts to land her dream home. Best Offer Wins often abandons the comedy to just go full dark. It’s been repeatedly compared to Gone Girl for obvious reasons. While reading it I found myself thinking the book was taking a long time to start being Gone Girl but then I remembered that Gone Girl took its time before going full, well, Gone Girl.
I don’t want to say much more about the plot, since most of the fun in the book is discovering how far Margo is willing to go. There is a good amount of cringe comedy — an early dinner party with the owners is supremely uncomfortable and devolves into a social disaster that would deter any rational person from going further. For those of us familiar with the local real estate market as buyers, sellers, or agents, Kashino invokes both knowing eye rolls and emphatic WTFs as Margo’s quest escalates.
A great beach/pool read for the summer season, unless you’re in the middle of a home search, in which case you may want to wait until after you’ve finished that. I don’t want anyone getting any strange ideas about how to get ahead of the competition.
Coming Up
Last week, while surfing through the online book sphere, I realized I’d never read Joan Didion, an author of nearly totemic status for many but whose work I’d just never gotten around to. Books & Bakes seems like a good time to change that, so I ordered a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir of the year following the death of her husband at their New York City dinner table after visiting their comatose daughter in the hospital.
It is not light reading. I’m not sure a memoir of grief was what I mentally needed at the moment — is it ever? — but it has me thinking about many, many things in my own life. I’ll have more on it soon and I promise not to be completely depressing about it.
I also finished Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, which I previewed earlier, and I’m glad I did because I needed a burst of good humor in the midst of all this. I’m still working on Colson Whitehead’s literary zombie novel, Zone One, but I may take a brief detour into something a little less heady. Maybe I’ll grab one of the many horror paperbacks I’ve bought over the years but haven’t gotten around to.
I’m still on track to meet my twenty-book minimum, so I’ll be keeping up the pace this week.
As always, to learn more about Cake4Kids and to make a pledge for Books & Bakes, visit seanbuggrealtor.com/books-and-bakes.
