People Live Here by TJ Benson is a novel that will inspire conversation because of its novelty and its ambition, but it will also inspire a lot of divisive commentary because of its stylistic choices and less than stellar execution.
Like many readers, my first proper introduction to TJ Benson’s preoccupation with exploring the limits of the mind and stretching many otherwise intractable narrative rules was his debut novel, The Mad House. A speculative experiment that took a decade to write, The Mad House lured readers deep into the minds of its five primary characters—a family of four and the house that houses them when they are together and haunts them when they are apart. Its success positioned Benson as one of the few Nigerian writers whose work divests from the Western gaze.
In light of that, his second novel, People Live Here, sold to Masobe Books, was highly anticipated. I personally anticipated it because of how much Benson’s first novel deviates thematically and stylistically from his collection of short stories. I was curious to see where Benson would go next or if he would suffer the sophomore curse...
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