Join me in my crumbling underground halls, among the leering marble statues and tasteful mid-century Corinthian columns, to discuss the inferior world of overland lairs. Though I enjoy living in a ghastly, forgotten temple occupied only by various species of rat and ghoul, there are some who yearn for a “house” in the place they call the “suburbs.”
In this book — “Best Offer Wins,” by Marisa Kashino — we will investigate the consequences of this backwards ideal and answer the primary question once and for all: Should we all give up on ever being able to afford a house and just go back to living in caves?
What would you do to secure your perfect life? In a culture obsessed with women’s milestones of success in business, marriage, children and homeowning, this book explores what transpires when a woman lets all decency fall to the wayside of achieving her “American Dream.”
“Best Offer Wins” is a psychological thriller about a moderately affluent woman and her trail of destruction on the quest for her dream home.
Margo and Ian have been in the midst of an arduous struggle to buy a house and finally start their family. After selling their run-down “starter home” during the pandemic, they’ve begun living in a tiny apartment in Washington, D.C., and unsuccessfully househunting as their offers are rejected again and again.
Margo wants nothing more than to be a mother and give her baby the childhood she herself never had. She will not accept anything less than the perfect home, perfect neighborhood and perfect life for her future child.
When she sees her dream house, she instantly knows she must have it. The owners, Jack and Curt, live an idyllic suburban life with their adopted daughter, Penny. Deeply envious of their beautiful, affluent family and home, she’ll do anything to manipulate them into selling her the house before the open market shatters her hopes.
Sometimes you want to read a book that is fun, engaging and light. Not every book needs to be of the utmost literary quality or thematic density. What this novel lacks in depth and writing, it makes up for in being an absolute romp — if you have a soft-spot for morally bankrupt protagonists.
Where Kashino’s work shines, though, is in the thriller part of a psychological thriller. As Margo grows increasingly unhinged in her methods of attaining the house, the reader is left in white-knuckled suspense waiting for the entire dream-house of cards to collapse.
Amplifying its compulsively engaging quality, “Best Offer Wins” is nothing if not readable. With simple, modern language and a relatively fast pace, it’s a perfectly approachable book for anybody emerging from a reading slump.
A heroine this unlikable is an acquired taste, but here it’s a glorious delicacy nonetheless. Being inside Margo’s absurdly conniving mind is like glimpsing a parallel reality. She carefully plans every interaction out, down to each tear and smile. Her casual manipulation and lies build into a complex web of deception, which grows ever harder for her to maintain.
Niceties aside, it must be mentioned that this book’s class commentaries about the difficulties of modern homebuying are largely stale and out of touch. With its incredibly privileged narrator, “Best Offer Wins” provides little value to the conversation about affordability and housing, other than pointing out that homebuying is hard.
Margo is fixated on getting a house in a suburban “good neighborhood.” She spends much of the book looking down on urban “bad neighborhoods” and the poor, homeless or addicted people who she thinks live there. While the audience is clearly not intended to agree with Margo, the narrative never fully interrogates her classism.
In a book about homebuying, with a narrator who spends so much time glamorizing the majority-white upper-class neighborhoods of D.C., there’s a massive missed opportunity to discuss redlining, systemic racism and for whom the American Dream fails.
Historically, Washington D.C. was a predominantly Black city, but over the last 20 years, gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs have caused Black residents to become a demographic minority. Gentrification is mentioned a single time in the first chapter and then never again, leaving a huge part of D.C.’s housing issue virtually untouched.
These gaps in the book’s commentary wouldn’t be so glaring if “Best Offer Wins” wasn’t marketed as “a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.”
Additionally, as a bridge between the gripping first and third acts of the book, the second act slumps in the middle. The story loses some coherence as the character-focused psychological thriller is padded with an unnecessary mystery detour.
Despite my complaints, Kashino finishes this book on a high note. The ending is so ridiculous, so unbelievable, such an absurd tone-shift, that it wraps all the way around to being incredible. The implausibly dramatic ending works well as a capstone to the gradual incline of implausible drama throughout the book.
“Best Offer Wins” is like a bag of hot chips: a delicious and flavorful treat, albeit nutritionally barren and liable to leave your stomach complaining.
I’ll be placing this text in my stone-hewn glacial cold-storage chamber, where it will remain fresh and crisp until I’m called upon for an easy midnight snack once again.
As my haunted oaken grandfather clock informs me, it is now time to answer the question we started with. In our current economic landscape, it does indeed cost much more time, labor, psychological manipulation and money to buy a house than it does to move into a nice, comfortable cavern.
I, for one, will be sticking to my rat-infested buried cathedral, thank you very much.
