Overview

A spring day in a gentrifying neighbourhood begins unremarkably enough; by evening someone has died. Nat, a middle-aged queer mother of two, feigns normalcy as she worries about her taciturn, loner son locked in his room. Her friend Maddy, a failed actress and fellow parent, frets over her missed opportunities and considers leaving her marriage. Next door, Ilya, a young construction worker, struggles to renovate a fixer-upper, but a buried stream threatens to flood the basement. An old woman eyes the street through the gap in her curtains. A lonely man wanders. As the troubled residents stumble through their errands, navigating the thorniness of class and privilege, of queer respectability and friendship in an overstretched city, each seemingly inconsequential exchange tightens in around the neighbourhood, until finally tragedy strikes, leaving it forever changed.

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9781552455074

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Householders: ""Cayley writes with a passion that seems to extend that longed-for forgiveness to her characters when they cannot bring themselves to do it for themselves."" - Memphis Flyer ""You don't have to come from a foreign country to be a stranger in your land. Cayley's haunting short stories weave together stealthily, gentle until the cosh strikes your skull ... Brutally, beautifully lyrical."" - Lavender Magazine ""Full of startling turns of phrase and evocative descriptions ... Cayley's background as a poet--she has published two collections of poetry--shines ... With Householders, Cayley has envisioned a world that mirrors our own like a distorted funhouse--a place where the moral and physical stakes are heightened, where emotional bonds run deeply, and where something menacing is often lurking. It's a frightening world, but it makes for a compelling story collection, as good to tear through for the narrative as it is to savor (and savor again) for the language."" - ZYZZYVA ""Cayley's world is a dangerous place, all the structures built with discarded slivering wood and rusted nails, but one where strange sacredness arrives in the middle of the ordinary day. The mysterious reasons that push her misplaced, displaced people are as convincing as memories, painful but necessary to relive. Read these stories, you'll be glad you did."" - Marina Endicott, author of The Voyage of the Morning Light ""Taut and brimming with clarity."" - Souvankham Thammavongsa, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of How to Pronounce Knife ""Reading each story in Kate Cayley's Householders is like entering a household, one that is unique in its treasured secrets and hidden corners of glory and shame. The inhabitants--a trio of aging hippies, a blogger masquerading as a nun, a group of traumatized escapees from a fanatical commune, a washed-up but still brilliant musician--are all seekers after whatever good life, or good death, they can find. Having met them, the reader is left with a lingering sense of responsibility, as for worrisome old friends who are loved in spite of themselves."" - KD Miller, author of Late Breaking

Selected for The Booksellers' List inaugural Fall 2025 edition ""Cayley creates an environment in which everything has heightened meaning and in which no action or transgression, however small, is without potential consequence."" - Emily Mernin, Literary Review of Canada ""Sentence after remarkable sentence, Cayley's portrayal of a day in a neighbourhood simultaneously dazzles and induces a deep discomfort."" - Brett Josef Grubisic, Quill & Quire, ★ starred review ""A day in the life of a Rube Gold-'burb, where all actions have an equal and opposite cul-de-saction; every child a potential bad seed, every adult heading for a minor nick or major cave-in. A fun and disturbing read, strong in characters, paced with perfect momentum, and its morbid heart residing in the right place."" - Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop ""Sincere, unsettling, and intimate...keenly observant of characters' inner and outer worlds, Cayley's narration expands and dissolves, elongating time and blurring subjectivity...Property shows how it is our unspoken, intrinsic understanding of debts to one another that holds us accountable."" - Lillian Liao, Booklist ""Cayley masterfully renders each character's inner world, showing how their fears and prejudices are amplified by loneliness. It's an unflinching tale of a community's fragile bonds."" - Publishers Weekly ""In this insistently particular and richly detailed portrait of a single street, Kate Cayley has captured the quiet dramas of our private lives, the contested spaces of our neighbourhoods, and the imperfect ways in which we try to understand one another. A wonderful and captivating novel, with a devastating shock at its heart."" - Jon McGregor, author of Lean Fall Stand ""Holy crap! What a novel. It's about a day but also about deep time. About knowing your neighbours and not having the least clue about your neighbours -- or, frankly, your loved ones. Keenly observed, superbly crafted, taut, surprising, unflinching, tender, sharply circumscribed and truly expansive, Property is a wonder."" - Anne Fleming, Curiosities: A Novel ""Kate Cayley's Property is both minutely observed and movingly kaleidoscopic, a meditation on fate, accident, free will, and of the elusive and illusive qualities of selfhood. Its questions and hopes -- layered into a single day on a single street -- are a living, breathing presence."" - Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records Praise for Householders: ""Cayley writes with a passion that seems to extend that longed-for forgiveness to her characters when they cannot bring themselves to do it for themselves."" - Memphis Flyer ""You don't have to come from a foreign country to be a stranger in your land. Cayley's haunting short stories weave together stealthily, gentle until the cosh strikes your skull ... Brutally, beautifully lyrical."" - Lavender Magazine ""Full of startling turns of phrase and evocative descriptions ... Cayley's background as a poet--she has published two collections of poetry--shines ... With Householders, Cayley has envisioned a world that mirrors our own like a distorted funhouse--a place where the moral and physical stakes are heightened, where emotional bonds run deeply, and where something menacing is often lurking. It's a frightening world, but it makes for a compelling story collection, as good to tear through for the narrative as it is to savor (and savor again) for the language."" - ZYZZYVA ""Cayley's world is a dangerous place, all the structures built with discarded slivering wood and rusted nails, but one where strange sacredness arrives in the middle of the ordinary day. The mysterious reasons that push her misplaced, displaced people are as convincing as memories, painful but necessary to relive. Read these stories, you'll be glad you did."" - Marina Endicott, author of The Voyage of the Morning Light ""Taut and brimming with clarity."" - Souvankham Thammavongsa, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of How to Pronounce Knife ""Reading each story in Kate Cayley's Householders is like entering a household, one that is unique in its treasured secrets and hidden corners of glory and shame. The inhabitants--a trio of aging hippies, a blogger masquerading as a nun, a group of traumatized escapees from a fanatical commune, a washed-up but still brilliant musician--are all seekers after whatever good life, or good death, they can find. Having met them, the reader is left with a lingering sense of responsibility, as for worrisome old friends who are loved in spite of themselves."" - KD Miller, author of Late Breaking

""Holy crap! What a novel. It's about a day but also about deep time. About knowing your neighbours and not having the least clue about your neighbours -- or, frankly, your loved ones. Keenly observed, superbly crafted, taut, surprising, unflinching, tender, sharply circumscribed and truly expansive, Property is a wonder."" - Anne Fleming, Curiosities: A Novel ""Kate Cayley's Property is both minutely observed and movingly kaleidoscopic, a meditation on fate, accident, free will, and of the elusive and illusive qualities of selfhood. Its questions and hopes -- layered into a single day on a single street -- are a living, breathing presence."" - Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records Praise for Householders: ""Cayley writes with a passion that seems to extend that longed-for forgiveness to her characters when they cannot bring themselves to do it for themselves."" - Memphis Flyer ""You don't have to come from a foreign country to be a stranger in your land. Cayley's haunting short stories weave together stealthily, gentle until the cosh strikes your skull ... Brutally, beautifully lyrical."" - Lavender Magazine ""Full of startling turns of phrase and evocative descriptions ... Cayley's background as a poet--she has published two collections of poetry--shines ... With Householders, Cayley has envisioned a world that mirrors our own like a distorted funhouse--a place where the moral and physical stakes are heightened, where emotional bonds run deeply, and where something menacing is often lurking. It's a frightening world, but it makes for a compelling story collection, as good to tear through for the narrative as it is to savor (and savor again) for the language."" - ZYZZYVA ""Cayley's world is a dangerous place, all the structures built with discarded slivering wood and rusted nails, but one where strange sacredness arrives in the middle of the ordinary day. The mysterious reasons that push her misplaced, displaced people are as convincing as memories, painful but necessary to relive. Read these stories, you'll be glad you did."" - Marina Endicott, author of The Voyage of the Morning Light ""Taut and brimming with clarity."" - Souvankham Thammavongsa, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of How to Pronounce Knife ""Reading each story in Kate Cayley's Householders is like entering a household, one that is unique in its treasured secrets and hidden corners of glory and shame. The inhabitants--a trio of aging hippies, a blogger masquerading as a nun, a group of traumatized escapees from a fanatical commune, a washed-up but still brilliant musician--are all seekers after whatever good life, or good death, they can find. Having met them, the reader is left with a lingering sense of responsibility, as for worrisome old friends who are loved in spite of themselves."" - KD Miller, author of Late Breaking

Author Information

Kate Cayley has previously published two short story collections and three collections of poetry, and her plays have been performed in Canada, the US, and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, and been a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, among other awards. Her writing has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Best Canadian Stories, Brick, Electric Literature, Joyland, and The New Quarterly. She lives in Toronto.

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