Lindsay Hunter's "Hot Springs Drive": When the house of happiness becomes the house of unhappiness

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It's a strange psychological thriller that you enter without really knowing where you're going, disconcerted by the profusion of characters and voices, each paragraph giving voice to a different person speaking about the house on Hot Springs Drive, and that you finish by frantically turning the pages because the plot is so captivating. Everything starts with the house, then. "It hadn't asked for anything, this house. Neither what happened there nor what it was forced to contain—the echoes it had to stifle, the sticky liquid it had to absorb. It was just a house, a collection of rooms, a divided space," writes American novelist Lindsey Hunter. And yet in this collection of rooms, the horror is about to happen.

It must first be said that this house, inhabited by Theresa, her husband Adam and their daughter Cecilia, who we call Cece, is not isolated. Beside it, separated by a simple wall, stands another house, inhabited by Theresa and Adam's best friends: Jackie, her husband Nick and their four boys, Douglas, Jayson, Nathan and Sammy. Jackie met Theresa at the maternity ward when they had both just given birth, one to Cece, the other to Jayson. She was immediately drawn to the aura of simple happiness that surrounded Theresa. "One day, her husband brought balloons ; another a box of chocolates. I watched him kiss her on the forehead, hold the baby like a bouquet of flowers, give it back to her. A wave of warmth ran through my whole body, down to my legs. I thought back to the time when Nick didn't know how to hold a baby." Jackie, on the other hand, feels nothing but immense weariness; she doesn't know how to handle children, she's a mess, she feels fat. She sees herself as a bad mother, while Theresa is a good mother. She dreams of absorbing a little of her roommate's bliss.

When Theresa learns that the house next to hers is available, she immediately tells Jackie. The two women have become best friends; this would be a way to be even closer. And soon, the five children are spending their time together, especially Nathan and Cece, who are madly in love with each other. Douglas, on the other hand, prefers to spy on Cece in her room after dark.

It's going to take Jackie a while to lose her excess weight. Four children in a row aren't helping. So when Theresa tells her about a miracle diet, she goes for it. Her new figure boosts her libido, and she feels irresistible. In fact, Theresa's husband isn't going to resist. Their relationship is humming along, he needs a little spice, and Jackie brings it to him on a plate. Except one day, while the two are frolicking on the couch at his house, Theresa comes home earlier than expected and surprises them. The next day, Theresa is found murdered in her garage.

The murderer is of course in the immediate circle, but before discovering his name, we will go through all the thoughts, all the memories of the different protagonists of this story. Jealousy, love, desire, infidelity: these feelings of everyday life are all examined with a fine-tooth comb. We are in the American suburbs, but this could take place anywhere, so universal are these feelings, fortunately or unfortunately. We are fascinated because we understand how an ordinary life can go wrong in a split second, how jealousy and envy can pulverize two families and forever haunt a house on Hot Springs Drive.