‘Dwelling’ fictionalizes the American housing crisis with elements of fairy tale

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In Emily Hunt Kivel’s new novel Dwelling, a mass eviction in New York City throws a young woman’s life into chaos. Suddenly homeless, Evie relocates to Gulluck, Texas, where she moves into a giant cowboy boot, the only rental property she can afford. In today’s episode, Kivel joins NPR’s Adrian Ma for a discussion about how she approached American capitalism through the lens of fairy tales.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. How did you decide to live wherever you live now? Did you move for a job, for a partner? Did you visit one day and think, hey, you know what? It's pretty nice here. There are so many forks in the road that lead us to wherever we are now, and it's just up to us to turn the places we land into home, which is something author Emily Hunt Kivel talks about in today's interview.
0:29.5	Her debut novel, Dwelling, is about a woman who gets kicked out of New York City and has to live in a boot in Texas.
0:36.4	Yes, a boot.
0:38.2	The book is something of a blend between fairy tale and magical realism.
0:42.9	And Kivel talked to Amper's Aja Ma about building a world where the most wondrous things are left unexplained.
0:49.5	That's ahead.
0:50.8	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:55.6	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:00.2	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:02.2	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:06.0	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:09.5	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever
1:12.6	you get your podcasts. New York City is thrown into chaos at the start of a new novel
1:18.8	dwelling. The mayor has decided to turn all the city's available rental housing into
1:23.7	glorified Airbnbs. And because of this mass eviction, the city's renters soon find all their stuff piled up on the sidewalks like garbage.
1:33.7	And that is where Evie Carvalho finds herself.
1:36.9	On the sidewalk, sitting on a random couch with a cook who is, well, not a cook anymore because they're unemployed and homeless. Both of them were
1:45.7	trying to figure out where to go from here when the cook says, I guess I also have a niece with
1:50.4	a duplex in Wisconsin, and my aunt has a ranch in Texas near Gullock? Gullock. The name lodged in
1:57.3	Evie's mind like a funny piece of glass. She said goodbye to the man, though he was
2:01.7	already lost within himself, and walked towards the bridge that would take her to the city center.
2:06.7	She stepped over a baking sheet and shower caddy that lay prostrate across the sidewalk.
	...

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