Andrea Uptmor’s 'The New People' Turns a Foreclosed House Into a Study of Queer Marriage, Economic Precarity, and Haunting
Andrea Uptmor’s debut novel follows newlyweds who move into a foreclosed home already inhabited by its former owners in the attic, using the unlikely setup to explore marriage, homeownership, parenthood, and the instability of domestic life in 2008. In conversation with Electric Literature, Uptmor said the novel grew out of real foreclosure-era experiences and her interest in the uneasy overlap between legal ownership and actual occupation.
Andrea Uptmor’s debut novel, The New People, begins with a premise that is at once comic, eerie, and politically charged: newlyweds Emma and Rachel move into a foreclosed house in a Midwestern campus town in 2008, only to discover that the former owners, Charlotte and Dirk, are still living in the attic. The arrangement, known as phrogging, turns the house into a site of secret cohabitation and escalating tension, and gives Uptmor a sharp way to examine what home means when ownership is unstable and private life is under pressure.
What makes the setup feel larger than a clever conceit is the way the house becomes a model of the social world around it. Charlotte begins sabotaging the home in hopes that “the new people” will leave, and the resulting conflict pulls the novel beyond suspense into questions about marriage, parenthood, and the infrastructure that supports family life. For readers, especially those whose access to marriage and domestic security has historically been restricted, the book’s central conflict carries more than plot interest: it asks what it means to build a life inside institutions that have not always been available on equal terms.