How to Sell a Haunted House

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parts 4-5

Character Analysis

Themes

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Themes

The Power of Secrets

In How to Sell a Haunted House, Hendrix explores the power of secrets to shape a family and the distance that those secrets create. Through Louise and Mark’s distant relationship, Hendrix shows the Joyner family dynamic at the beginning of the novel. Mark sums it up when he says, “There’s all this stuff in our family we don’t talk about. Mom doesn’t talk about her family, Dad doesn’t talk about his family, and you and I don’t talk, period” (189). This lack of communication inevitably leads to secrets, and not until all of the family secrets are revealed are Louise and Mark able to put Freddie’s spirit to rest.

From the beginning, Louise is resistant to both learning about and telling the truth about her family. She follows the family tradition of secrets and silence. Even when faced with obvious signs of the supernatural, Louise retreats into what she wants to believe to be true, ignoring the evidence of her own senses and keeping it a secret from Mark. Despite the pain these secrets cause, no one will share the truth until Mark begins to peel back the secrets the family has been hiding.

The first secret Mark exposes is the revelation that Louise tried to drown Mark when they were children. Even after he shares this truth, Louise withholds her own information about the incident: “She didn’t try to kill Mark. Pupkin did” (169). Typical of the family, Louise resists sharing with Mark and even resists the secret that he is sharing with her. Until he forces honesty on her, they have no understanding of the family history, but once she reveals her additional information, they are able to get closer to the truth. Further, when Mark shares the story about Pupkin’s connection to him leaving Boston University, they are able to begin to untangle Pupkin’s story in way that wouldn’t have been possible without these truths being exposed.

Although Louise looks down on Mark, he is the only one in the family that understands how this lack of communication hurts their relationships. In fact, as the story continues, it does more than hurt their relationships—it causes physical pain and damage that climaxes when Mark loses his arm. Even after this, when Mercy asks Louise what happened, Louise withholds the information, thinking, “Pupkin, Spider, what she’d had to do to Mark—that was Joyner family business” (303). Despite the fact that Mercy has shown herself to be remarkably down-to-earth about haunted houses, and that she and Aunt Gail might be able to help, Louise still instinctively keeps what happened a secret. However, when she returns to Charleston with Poppy, Louise reveals the entire story of Pupkin to Aunt Gail, and together they begin to solve the problem. Once again, a secret has been brought out, and because of that, the problem can find resolution.

The last big secret that has to come out before Mark and Louise can move on is the true story of Freddie’s death. When Poppy is threatened, Louise finally feels the urgency to unravel the secrets to the same degree that Mark has felt it. At the end of the novel, Louise understands the importance of exposing secrets. When she realizes that Aunt Honey is the only person who knows how Freddie really died, she immediately confronts her. True to family tradition, Aunt Honey resists telling them until Louise forces her to; when Louise and Mark finally hear the true story of Freddie’s death, they finally understand what they need to do. Not until the family confronts the truth of Freddie’s death are they able to put his ghost to rest and then move on with their own lives.

Redefining Family

The issue of family is central to How to Sell a Haunted House. At the beginning of the novel, Louise sees her family as just herself and her daughter, Poppy. However, Louise’s idea of who her family is shifts and grows, first to include Mark then to include her cousins and Aunt Gail. In the end, this shift enables her to overcome Pupkin’s attack on her daughter, freeing her entire family from a traumatic past event.

When Louise’s parents die, she is drawn back into her larger family upon her return to Charleston. Although Louise resists the idea that her family lies in Charleston, she also feels great comfort in the company of her extended family. When she first arrives, she immediately gravitates toward Aunt Honey, and the other women in the family show up to support her. Louise reflects that she “[feels] small and safe, sipping her wine, surrounded by these loud women doing everything for her. She marvel[s] at how easy they [are] with each other, how they [get] along so unselfconsciously, how different they [are] from her and Mark” (48). However, Louise still draws lines between her small family with Mark and her extended family. Although she finds comfort with them, she still sees them as something apart from herself.

After what she and Mark go through together, Louise expands her idea of family to include him. When Mercy asks what happened after the confrontation with Pupkin, Louise withholds the story, thinking, “There was family and then there was family. Pupkin, Spider, what she’d had to do to Mark—that was Joyner family business” (303). Although she is slowly redefining her idea of family, it doesn’t stretch that far. It is not until Louise once again expands her idea of family to include the extended family that real change begins to happen. Mark recognizes this earlier than she does. When Poppy is being controlled by Pupkin, he advises, “I don’t know anything about talking puppets or possession or ghosts or hauntings, but Aunt Gail? This is where she lives. And family are the people who can’t say no. You need to come home” (327). He understands the power and reliability of family support and pushes Louise to accept and trust that support as well.

In the novel, Hendrix makes it clear that accepting help and support from family is the only way to banish family troubles. At the novel’s opening, Louise has traveled far from her family and has been emotionally distant for many years; by the novel’s end, her ability to redefine what family is and what it means to her is the key to bringing peace to the family.

The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships

In How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix explores the relationship between mothers and daughters through Louise’s relationships with her mother, Nancy, and her own daughter, Poppy. Although she loves her mother, Louise is determined to make different choices, approaching motherhood in a different way. These choices are what enable Louise to save Poppy from Pupkin, charting a different course forward with her own daughter and healing some family wounds.

From the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Louise and Nancy have a difficult relationship. In Chapter 1, her mother is unquestioningly supportive when Louise announces that she is pregnant. However, after only a few days, Nancy’s visit to her is strained. Upon entering the room where her mother is napping, Louise accidentally wakes Nancy up: “‘I love you,’ her mom said without opening her eyes. Louise froze. ‘I know,’ she said after a moment. ‘No,’ her mom said, ‘you don’t’” (4). This exchange is typical of their communication: Their desire for connection is clear, but Nancy’s refusal to elucidate leaves Louise feeling more confused and distant than ever: “[D]id her mom mean Louise didn’t know she loved her? Or how much she loved her? Or she wouldn’t understand how much her mom loved her until she had a daughter of her own?” (4) The topic of maternal love is an especially sore topic for Louise, as she has spent her life resenting her mother’s favoritism of Mark. When, after her mother’s death, she discovers that Mark has inherited everything, it only seems to confirm for Louise that she is an outsider in the family, hurting her further.

Once Louise becomes a mother, she sees the flaws in her mother’s approach: “Her mom had manipulated them throughout their childhoods with impossible promises and flat-out lies […] and she’d vowed to always be honest and straightforward with her own child” (10). Louise is constantly referencing Nancy’s behavior, using it to shape her own behavior with Poppy. Louise’s determination to be different from Nancy is the reason why, in Chapter 2, she decides to tell Poppy that her grandparents have died. Her mother had always avoided the topic of death, so Louise chooses to go in the opposite direction, approaching the topic with her own daughter very directly. Afterward, she questions her decision: “Louise wanted to say something to make it all better [...] feeling like she’d failed at being a mother, wondering how she’d screwed this up so badly, trying to remember how her mom had explained death to her. Then she remembered: she hadn’t” (19). Although Ian sees it as harsh, Louise understands the importance of clarity and straightforwardness because of her own murky communication with Nancy.

Although Nancy’s avoidance of the topic was understandable to an extent because of her brother Freddie’s death, Louise and Mark eventually have a harder time excusing their mother’s choices. By the end, Louise becomes fully angry with Nancy when she discovers the true spirit of Pupkin. She feels that, by not telling them the truth, their mother betrayed them: “She had brought Pupkin into their lives. She had given him to Louise, and she had given him to Mark, and Pupkin had almost killed Mark twice and now he had almost killed Louise […] She’d sacrificed them for Pupkin” (249). Louise breaks with this family dysfunction by choosing a different path, refusing to sacrifice Poppy to Pupkin. Instead, she seeks out the truth, risking her life to make her child safe. In doing so, she makes space for family healing to take place so trauma is not passed down to the next generation.