House of Youssef

The debut collection by a Lebanese-Australian writer remarkable for her focus on the immigrant family and her understated minimalist style. The House of Youssef is a collection of short stories set in the suburbs of Western Sydney. The stories explore the lives of Lebanese migrants who have settled in the area, circling around the themes of isolation, the expectations of the family, and nostalgia for the home country. In particular, House of Youssef is about relationships, and the customs which complicate them: children growing away from their parents, the dark secrets in marriage, the breakable bonds between friends. The stories are told with extreme minimalism - some are only two pages long - heightening their emotional intensity. The collection is framed by two soliloquies. The first expresses the longing of an old man for the homeland he will never return to. The second is the monologue of a mother addressed to her daughter, about life in the new country and its disappointments. The two sequences of stories are composed of vignettes which focus on moments of domestic crisis, and which combine, in the title sequence, to chart the demise of a single family, 'the house of Youssef'.