The Call Is Coming from Inside the Ho..., Allyson McOuat
The Call Is Coming from Inside the Ho..., Allyson McOuat
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Call Is Coming from Inside the House
Essays

Author: Allyson McOuat

Narrator: Allyson McOuat

Unabridged: 6 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/28/2024


Synopsis

From Allyson McOuat, author of the popular 2020 New York Times Modern Love essay "The Ghost Was the Least of Our Problems," comes her debut essay collection

In a series of intimate and humorous dispatches, McOuat examines her identity as a queer woman, and as a mother, through the lens of the pop culture moments in the '80s and '90s that molded her identity. McOuat stirs the ingredients required to conjure an unsettled spirit: the horrors of pregnancy and motherhood, love and loss, the supernatural, kaleidoscopic sexuality, near-miss experiences, and the unexplained moments in life that leave you haunted.

Through her own life experiences, various tall tales, urban legends, analysis of horror and thriller films, and spine-chilling true crime incidents, McOuat uncovers how cultural gatekeeping has forced her, as a mother and queer femme woman, to persistently question her own reality. Through this charming and humorous exploration of what moments have made her who she is, McOuat demonstrates for listeners a way through by forgiving herself and exorcising her stubborn attachment to a phantom, heteronormative, nuclear family structure.

About Allyson McOuat

Allyson McOuat (she/her) is a queer writer from Toronto who has been published in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, Broadview magazine, and Plenitude magazine. McOuat's Modern Love essay was adapted for television by Modern Love Amsterdam on Amazon Prime. She is a mom of two amazing daughters.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sahitya on July 29, 2024

More of a 3.5 I guess. I’m usually not a personal essay reader, so I frankly don’t know what I was thinking requesting an arc of this. While there were some essays about her personal loss and love and motherhood which were interesting, the rest of them felt just very unrelatable to me. The overarchi......more

Goodreads review by fer on February 07, 2025

cuatro y algo. he sido y seré una persona de ensayos y me gusta leer como relaciona todo con lo cotidiano. es divertido leer anécdotas de saficas divorciadas JAJJAJA. el capitulo de su hija y las relaciones en secundaria me hizo pensar mucho en mi educación básica. entendí el 5% de las referencias.......more

Goodreads review by Jillane on April 08, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC! I find it hard to review personal essay collections, because so much of it is so subjective. Some of the author’s reflections about her own experiences are well-connected with the pop culture she explores, but overall I found there to be a lack......more

Goodreads review by Jess on June 13, 2024

The Call is Coming From Inside the House by Allyson McOuat was an essay collection examining horror through the lens of womanhood, queer identity, motherhood and feminism. Some essays were definitely better than others- I loved the one about Blair Witch Project and the one about Amber Heard 👌 the se......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on June 15, 2024

One of those books where, on multiple instances, a single sentence hits you so hard you have to stop and catch your breath. Admittedly sometimes I was bored for pages at a time, bumping this down to 4/5 for me.......more