House of Hollow

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapter 21-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Carrion Flowers

White carrion flowers are primarily a symbol of deception, but also mirror the Hollow sisters themselves. Though the flowers are beautiful, they smell of “rotting flesh to attract flies and bugs” (135). Iris first sees the “death flowers” growing from a picture of Grey, and then they reappear on the corpse in Grey’s apartment, around freestanding doors, and in the Halfway house where the original Hollow girls are buried. The flowers use their beauty to lure prey, just as the Hollow sisters’ skin can manipulate others through contact. Grey weaponizes her beauty the most out of the sisters, a carrion flower in human form who draws attention and kills in service of her loved ones.

The carrion flowers also symbolize the Hollow sisters’ identities as changelings. Agnes analogizes Iris’s background by using the carrion flower: “You are like the death flowers that grow rampant in your wake: lovely to look at, intoxicating even, but get too close and you will soon learn that there is something rank beneath” (200). Not just Grey hides a dark secret: All three sisters are dangerous creatures who wear the skin of murdered girls (though Iris and Vivi are ignorant of the truth). The freestanding doors are always covered in carrion flowers, as though a part of the half-dead Halfway seeps into the living world, just as the Hollow sisters once belonged to the Halfway but deceived the doors in order to live a second life.

Freestanding Doors

As portals that lead to the Halfway, freestanding doors represent the line between the known and unknown world, a gateway between reality and fantasy. Grey used to tell Iris and Vivi that “broken doors” could be used to enter a new, mysterious world, and that some people go “missing because they fall through a gap somewhere and can’t claw their way back” (137). The doors are a physical representation of believing one has escaped, only to find themselves trapped. The allure of the doors, like the Hollow girls and carrion flowers, pull people in with their mystery.

The freestanding doors also symbolize agency and choice, as they introduce the Hollow sisters to new possibilities. Each sister faces difficult decisions, and must choose whether to open doors and face the unknown, or stay in their current reality, one in which they don’t have answers to their past. By opening a door with Tyler, Iris takes control of her own destiny and embraces the mystery of the supernatural world. The freestanding doors are also referenced as part of folklore. While researching online threads, Iris sees someone comment that “I can’t remember where the folklore is from exactly, but I’ve heard stories of people (mostly children) disappearing after walking through freestanding doors they found in the forest” (213). This folkloric reference legitimizes the doors as portals and strengthens Sutherland’s worldbuilding.

The Halfway

Integral to the theme of Memory and Letting Go, the Halfway represents transformation and redemption. Agnes calls it a “liminal place on the borders of the living and the dead,” and that “everything that dies must pass through there,” but some are trapped in the process (199). People who either can’t let go, or are too loved or mourned are stuck in limbo. Despite the fact that the Halfway is a place of stagnation, the decaying setting is alive in its own right, pushing spirits to either move on or risk becoming half-dead creatures:

Some were so fresh they had fabric decaying on their bodies, and a few still smelled like people: of sweat and oil and the sharp tang of urine. Others were much older, so misshapen it was hard to tell they’d once been human apart from the teeth and nails and clumps of hair erupting from knots of wood (224).

The Halfway consumes souls with its gnarled trees, swampy waters, and more. In a rough way, the environment encourages souls to move on, offering them redemption (a place in the afterlife) if they transcend past regrets or wants, as Gabe does. The Halfway also offers the Hollow sisters the truth, an opportunity to transform into individuals rather than remain parts of a whole (extensions of Grey). Iris and Vivi are forever changed upon learning of their gruesome past: They’re able to process their trauma and find ways to move forward after confronting Gabe and Grey. The Halfway provides a symbolic space for Iris in particular, allowing her to embrace her identity as someone of the Halfway, someone stronger and stranger. The Halfway opens Iris and Vivi’s eyes to a greater reality and allows them to proceed with self-awareness, just as it offers all souls a transitional place between one reality and the next.