My review of Margot Singer’s wonderful essay collection, Secret Agent Man.

What if our homes help prolong our lives? asks one of Margot Singer’s haunting essays in Secret Agent Man. Even after being away for years, she thinks of her childhood house in Cochituate, Massachusetts, as an anchor and feels comforted to find her parents still embedded in its disheveled coziness: “Like an enchanted briar hedge, our parents’ house and all of their possessions have grown up around them, rooting them in place.” It can seem forbidding, she notes, even threatening as they age beyond the capacity to keep up with daily maintenance—in the yard, taking out trash, shoveling snow and ice. But then, what if the house is actually less of a looming health risk than the thing that’s helping to keep them alive?

Link to complete article.