ChabriAIR

CHABRIAIR :Does Eliot symbolise the "normal" side of the family while his sister might represent the 'weird" side of it? Or, as they are twins, are they just one person in two bodies showing a complex personality? 

HELEN OYEYEMI:

Eliot's perspective is stable and rational, yes, no matter how much he sometimes wishes he wasn't - he's unable to see anything that's not objectively there. He plays the extremely male role where Miranda plays the extremely female one. Part of what interested me about the two of them being twins is how different their experiences of the house are, just because of one of them is a boy and the other is a girl. 

Why do only the girls/women of the family disappear and not the boys/men?Is Eliott the rational part of Miranda? 

It's the story of a female inheritance, a story of the home, which is traditionally considered the kingdom of women. The men just live there, but the women's identities are tied up in their struggles to control their appetites and their desire to leave home behind. Eliot and Luc try to understand, but the situation is as much a mystery to them as it would be to a stranger. It's as if there are two family histories, and one of them is a secret one.

Does this house exist or is it just the fruit of your imagination? We do not really understand the lay out of the house and especially its different floors. Can you help? Thanks! 

The house doesn't really exist. But this is how I imagine it: its physical structure is normal - it has a basement, an attic and a lift - probably the only strange thing would be how hollow the walls are, and how much space there is between the floor of one room and the ceiling of the room below it. The house needs all that extra hidden space for unfolding.