Brewster Ladies' Library Books & Big Ideas: Book Discussion of "The High House" by Jessie Greengrass

Join us for a Books & Big Ideas book discussion! The theme for 2025 is Living on the Coast, and one of the books we've selected is The High House by Jessie Greengrass. Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award, a blurb about The High House is below. If the book sounds intriguing for you, join us for the discussion!

Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?

Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster—but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy—the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything—can teach them as his health fails.

A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.