House of Hollow

“Dark, dangerous things happened around the Hollow sisters.” 

This sentence captures the novel’s dark fairy tale tone and the trope of “weird sisters.” Iris, Vivi, and Grey share unnatural abilities that attract strangeness, including their assumed kidnapping.

“Grey knew her power and brandished it forcefully. [...] Grey was an enchantress who looked like sex and smelled like a field of wildflowers… [...] She walked home alone at night, always beautiful, sometimes, drunk, frequently in short skirts or low-cut tops. She did this without fear. [...]

She moved through the world like no other woman I knew.

‘What you don’t understand,’ she said to me once when I told her how dangerous it was, ‘is that I am the thing in the dark.’”

These specific details about Grey showcase her enchanting and vicious nature. Unlike her sisters, who don’t weaponize their beauty or intoxication, Grey uses both freely, unafraid of anyone or anything because she knows her immense power.

“[Grey] was a general and we were her small but fiercely loyal army. [...] It was not a question at all. I didn’t follow my sister. I was my sister. I breathed when she breathed. I blinked when she blinked. I felt pain when she felt pain. If Grey was going to jump off a bridge, I was going to be there with her, holding her hand.”

The depth of Iris, Vivi, and Grey’s supernatural bond is revealed in this quote. Iris’s undying loyalty and near-worship for Grey are integral to her childhood and continued closeness with her siblings. This flashback reinforces their shared identity.

“Grey’s brain was chaotic. [...] Nothing in her life had ever been neat or ordered. She slammed through the world, a tornado in the form of a girl, and left a trail of destruction behind her. That’s what she’d been like at seventeen, anyway. Maybe becoming a supermodel and fashion designer had changed that, but it seemed as impossible as switching out the bones of your skeleton.” 

Grey is framed as having a pension for destruction. The use of “destruction” and “switching out the bones of your skeleton” are fitting for a Gothic story. They also foreshadow the novel’s exploration of body horror, born of Grey killing and skinning the real Hollow girls.

“I felt like a thing to be devoured, sucked down to the marrow. [...] The curved windows on the other side of the train carriage reflected a strange beast back at me. There were two Irises: one my regular reflection, one upside down, both joined at the skull. A creature with two mouths, two noses, and a shared pair of eyes, empty black ovals distorted…”

Iris’s idea of a beastly double not only hints at her being a mirror of the real Iris Hollow, but links the living world and the Halfway. This quote’s focus on her physical looks and repeated use of “two” foreshadow the horrific truth of Iris’s identity (her wearing two layers of skin).

“When [Grey] snapped, she put her hands around our mother’s throat, forced her against the wall, and whispered something in her ear. [...] Cate was still. Whatever Grey had said splintered through her, electrifying her. [...] She slapped my sister so hard across the face that Grey’s lip split. [...]

‘Get the fuck out of my house,’ Cate had ordered in a low, steady voice, ‘and don’t ever, ever come back.’ [...]

The sudden violence of it made me hyperventilate. [...] They hadn’t spoken since that night, four years ago.”

Cate and Grey illustrate the most heated interpersonal conflict in the novel, marked by a violent encounter and its ripple effect. This brutal relationship also causes tension for Iris because she doesn’t know what Grey said to upset their mother.

“Of course I remember. I remember everything.

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

The words sunk into me like acid, dissolving my flesh. I snapped the Vogue shut and sat on Grey’s bare bed, my hand pressed over my mouth.”

Grey telling a reporter that she remembers everything about her and her sisters’ vanishing is a significant reveal, cutting into Iris and Vivi’s emotional core and challenging their reality. Grey’s deceptive, secretive personality is further revealed through her not telling her sisters, her closest friends, the truth.

“A world without Grey was impossible. Both of my sisters were the great loves of my life. I couldn’t live without them. I didn’t want to.”

This quote reinforces the sisters’ connection—particularly, Iris’s profound love for her siblings. Iris’s desperation reveals the heavy mental and emotional toll that comes at the thought of Grey being dead.

“I gave it a gentle tug and plucked it from her wound, tiny root system and all. The same kind of flower that had taken over the dead man’s body. The same kind of flower that had been growing from Grey’s eyes in the photograph.

It had been building inside Vivi, feeding off her blood, blooming in her scored-open flesh.”

The supernatural infestation of Iris’s world is heightened by the carrion flower, a symbol of deception and death. Growing out of Vivi, the flower foreshadows the otherworldly origins of the Hollow girls, with Iris’s reaction mirroring readers’ confusion and curiosity.

“I’m a girl made of bread crumbs, lost alone in the woods. -GH”

Grey sees herself as a mysterious loner made of bread crumbs. The idea of following crumbs to solve a mystery mirrors the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” and reflects the unraveling plot. Grey’s note is also darkly comedic because she is a girl made of someone else’s pieces, their “crumbs,” and is currently lost in the Halfway’s haunted woods escaping Gabe.

“The three of us, with the exact same rhythm in our chests. When one was scared, the hearts of the others knocked. If you cut us open and peeled back the skin, I was sure you’d find something strange: one organ shared, somehow, between three girls.”

The “weird sisters” trope is reinforced by the Hollow sisters sharing a heartbeat. Iris’s discussion of their joined identity reveals her inability to stand on her own, with the phrase “peeled back the skin” again foreshadowing the sisters’ stolen skin.

“‘In Grey’s fairy tale, that was how you got to the…in between place. The Halfway. Limbo. Whatever. You walked through a door that used to lead somewhere else. A broken door.’

My memory reached for something. Yes, a story Grey had told us when we were younger. The place she spoke of was strange, broken. Time and space got snagged there, caught in snarls.”

In the novel, freestanding doors mark the line between the living and the dead. The Halfway is portrayed as a simple fairy tale, but fairy tale references and other clues later reveal the Halfway to be real. This quote speaks to the novel itself being a dark fairy tale.

“Before she left, Grey went upstairs to speak to our mother Cate. [...] ‘If you hurt her,’ Grey said to our mother softly, ‘if you so much as harm a single hair on her head, I will come back here and I will kill you.’

If Cate answered, I didn’t hear it. I went to the bathroom and vomited. I thought of Justine Khan and how I could never unleash my sister on her, no matter how mean she became, because Justine was just a girl and my sister was something more, something crueler, the thing in the dark.”

Grey’s vicious temperament and protectiveness over Iris are revealed in her dialogue. She threatens to kill their mother Cate, as she did the real Hollow girls, all for the sake of keeping her sisters safe. Iris recognizes Grey’s darkness and could never bring herself to use her brutality on others, even her worse enemies.

“Something unfurled. Tin legs. A black body.

An ant.

[...] A second followed, popping from the tiny bore hole in my flesh [...] Thoughts of Grey’s abandoned apartment filled my head. The line of ants and something dead and gruesome hidden beneath the wallpaper.”

Iris finding ants inside her scar, where her skin is stitched to the real Iris, is a stark example of body horror. She’s terrified of the insects, but believes they connect to previous clues (like the novel’s many carrion flowers) and hint at something else beneath the “wallpaper” of her skin.

“[...] whatever sweet potion we carried on our breath, our lips, every inch of our skin worked its way into the doctor’s bloodstream and I saw her melt beneath my sister’s touch. When Grey pulled back from the kiss, the woman’s pupils were saucers, and she looked at Grey like a bride walking down the aisle on her wedding day. Awed. Overwhelmed. The most in love she’d ever been.”

The Hollow sisters’ intoxication is described as innate, being administered through their skin (physical contact). Grey’s victim being described as a happy bride showcases how formidable and irresistible the changelings’ powers are.

“‘Are you kidding me? It’s not like I asked for it! He followed me back here. Why are you angry with me?’

[Grey said], ‘Because you’re weak. Because you let lesser people push you around. Because you are afraid of how powerful you are and you shrink away from it. Because I won’t always be around to protect you. [...] Use the gifts you have been given. [...] You can bring them to their knees, if that’s what you want. You can make them pay.’

‘That isn’t what I want,’ I said, as I twisted out of her grip.”

After surviving an attempted sexual assault, Iris is confused, shocked, and hurt that Grey would be upset with her, which shows their differences. Grey embraces power, while Iris shrinks away from it. Iris cares about others and doesn’t like to use force, but Grey encouraging her to own her powers helps the youngest value herself later on. This dialogue establishes Grey as a dominating, merciless force and Iris as an empathetic, meek girl.

“I thought I knew why Grey dated Tyler. Because to be near a person who wasn’t prey to your intoxicating power, to kiss someone who would never become crazed at the scent of you—someone you couldn’t make want you, someone you couldn’t make love you, someone who desired you of their own free will—was something I had daydreamed about but thought impossible for me.”

Because of their intoxication powers, the Hollow sisters face conflict in romantic relationships. Tyler’s immunity to these powers makes him a unique, precious match for Grey because she doesn’t need to worry that his feelings are only due to her magical hold over him. Still, Grey breaks up with him amidst her stress over being stalked by the bull-man.

“Her eyes were wide and her lungs drew the rapid, shallow breaths of a hare watching a wolf across a field—as if deciding whether she should run or remain stock-still.”

This metaphor describes Agnes and her background with animalistic language. Comparing Agnes to a hare, as someone always on guard, fits her struggle in the Halfway, where she likely only survived due to her fight or flight instinct.

“‘That thing has taken everything else from me,’ Cate said. ‘I’m not going to let her take you too. Tell me where you are. You are mine, not hers. Do you hear me? You are mine.’

‘Are you talking about…Grey?’

‘Stay away from her, Iris. Please. Wherever you are, just get away from her. You are not safe, you are—’

‘Cate. Stop. I’m not leaving her. I’m not abandoning my sisters.’

‘Don’t trust her. Run. Listen to me. Please. You have to run. Run. Run.’”

The conflict between Iris and Cate over Grey calls back to the night when Grey was kicked out by Cate; Cate’s frantic protectiveness over Iris also reinforces a key part of her. Iris’s identity and loyalty are linked to her sisters, so she’s confused as to why Cate would dehumanize Grey as a “thing.” The intensity of Cate’s phone call adds suspense, tension, and foreshadowing for Grey’s inner darkness.

“‘The Halfway never lets you go,’ [Agnes] said. ‘Not really.’ [...] ‘It’s supposed to be a one-way ticket. Things that end up there are not supposed to be able to find a way back.’ [...] ‘Most things move on quickly, as they’re supposed to, but some things get stuck. Humans, usually. The ones who can’t let go, or who are mounted too deeply by those they leave behind.’”

Agnes describes the rich worldbuilding of the Halfway, establishing its rules to help readers understand its limitations. She also foreshadows Tyler tethering his deceased sister Rosie to the Halfway with his grief.

“Somewhere, not far from where I stood, my sisters had been dragged through a crack in the world. I didn’t know how to follow them. The one person who did—a little girl with rotten lungs—was, I suspected, already dead.”

This cliffhanger comes after the bull-man’s attack on Agnes’s house, and sets up the high stakes of Agnes and Tyler’s potential deaths; Agnes is soon confirmed to be dead. It also repeats the idea of a “crack in the world” (with these cracks being linked by freestanding doors), building the analogy of the Halfway as a form of limbo. This moment of helplessness is what pushes Iris to finally stand on her own and save her sisters her own way.

“IRIS, it read. The body it belonged to was missing its two front baby teeth. I unclipped the locket from the dead girl’s neck and held it up for Tyler to see.

‘What does it mean?’ Tyler asked as he watched the gold heart spin slowly in the half-light.

‘It means…’ I looked up at him. ‘I’m not Iris Hollow.’”

One of the novel’s most suspenseful reveals is when Iris finds the real Iris’s body. She slowly connects the pieces of her past, growing closer to the truth and knowing her existence has changed forever because she’s someone or something else entirely.

“I thought of the note Grey had pulled from [Gabe’s] pocket when we found him, the note she’d torn to shreds so our mother wouldn’t find it: I didn’t want this, it had said.

What if Gabe really hadn’t wanted to die?

What if…Grey had made him?

Because she knew. Of course she knew. Grey knew that she wasn’t Grey. She remembered everything.

‘There are little girls in a grave wearing necklaces with our names on them. What if, in the story Grey tells about what happened to us, we weren’t the three little girls?’ I said. I met Tyler’s eyes. ‘What if we were the monsters?’”

Iris’s questions and speculation start to illuminate Grey’s true personality and murders. As a result, the youngest redefines everything she thought she knew about herself and her sisters, relating to the themes of “Weird Sisters” Trope: Family and Identity and Memory and Letting Go. Despite the disturbing nature of the truth, Iris’s ability to keep moving forward speaks to her growth—her sensitivity giving way to emotional strength over the course of her journey.