I was reminded of the Tolstoy quote from Anna Karenina that ‘All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ when thinking about the surprising absence so far in the novels I’m reading for my PhD. One of the strands of my research is looking at existing materials to try and get a perspective on homes and how they’ve been represented, what the view is on how to improve them or just what ‘good’ looks like. As part of this I’ve read a few novels, and have still lots more to read but I’ve been surprised not to have found many examples of ‘the ideal home’, or even ones which are very happy yet. In remembering the Tolstoy quote it made me wonder if there’s something inherent in novels that explains this lack, or whether it’s more a reflection of my limited reading so far.

The Anna Karenina principle takes the idea from Tolstoy and applies it more broadly, holding that there is only one way to achieve success in that the key factors need to be in place, but there are countless ways to fail. This principle has been applied in contexts as diverse as ecology, banking and the domestication of animals.

Turning to the novels, there are a few slightly oblique glimpses of homes that seem to be happy. The couple who have their home and themselves attacked by Alex and his droogs in Anthony Burgess’s ‘A clockwork orange’; the family home of one of the main characters in ‘Glass Houses’ by Francesca Reece – although that’s more how it is represented or seen through the eyes of a visitor than by the occupants. Maybe some traces in the Elizabeth Gaskell novel ‘Cranford’ – but even there it isn’t straightforward because of the financial concerns of many of the protagonists. Alice’s home in Sarah Moss’s ‘The Fell’ has some details in there about how she takes comfort from details around the place, yet there is also a real sense of her isolation as she is recovering from cancer alone in a time of pandemic.

Looking at the list of novels I’m still yet to explore, none of them jump out at me as being about homes that are harmonious, idyllic refuges. I might find some more representations of that in the surrounding characters but the central premise of many of the books is about the home as a site of, or representation of, things falling apart, disconnection and sadness.

Perhaps this is because fiction tends to have a narrative drive at the heart of it. A tension which needs to be resolved somehow, and so happiness can be less easy to place there because the ‘happy ever after’ is the end not the through-line. That there is something implied about unhappiness being ‘news’ or a step away from the norm of a happy home. The novel is then a way to show how the world could be, and is for many others with all of the pain and darkness that can bring. Allowing us to understand something we might not experience ourselves.

Or could it be that the home as an unhappy or unsafe place works as a plot device because it immediately enables the reader to compare the context to the idea and ideal of home. A difficult home context allows the reader to get a sense of the protagonist being in a bad place. This can make them more sympathetic to the character. It also makes it understandable the character would be seeking a way to improve their situation in a way the writer doesn’t need to explain as much as they might for some other choices or needs.

Of course it could also be because writers don’t see enough happy homes around the place to make them feel believable or true. Writing novels can be a way to draw attention to things that aren’t right. To reflect back things society needs to or isn’t engaging with. From Dickens and Hardy in Victorian times to the novels of the 2020’s, art and culture can offer insights to lives that are beyond our own, and empathy for them which makes taking action necessary. For the novels of the 2020’s on my reading list, without even having read most of them there’s a clear theme emerging around how precarious housing can be. From Ella Frears’ ‘Goodlord’ which takes the form of an extended email to an unscrupulous estate agent to Megan Nolan’s ‘Ordinary human failings’ about families in temporary accommodation, to the 2024 novels ‘I see buildings fall like lightning’ by Keiran Goddard and ‘The lodgers’ by Holly Pester, about a housing estate and the UK housing crisis respectively.

That leaves me wondering if it’s less of a surprise I’m not finding more happy homes in the novels. While the quote from Tolstoy helped shape that sense of surprise, the principle doesn’t feel quite right in terms of the view of home. It’s true that even in the 14 novels I’ve read so far I’ve loved the diversity of style, tone and characters – a huge range even as the subject itself remains fixed and the homes are largely unhappy. Yet while there are lots of commonalities in the factors constituting a happy home, the plurality of ways a good home can be made seems to undermine the principle from that direction.