I must confess I thought this book would be more about the property market in DC and the experience of buying a house. And to some extent, it is about the pursuit of a house, but the focus is not really on the property market and competition and so on, it is on the protagonist, Margo. Margo is Japanese American (though her Japanese identity is not apparent in the novel), married to Ian, a government lawyer. 37 year old Margo is a publicist, a job she chose over her first love, journalism, for its higher salary. Ian took at job at the EPA at half his then-salary because he was not that interested in money. From the off, it is clear the couple have different values.
With the help of Ian’s parents and using their own savings, they get on the property ladder with
“a falling-apart row house almost far west enough to count as Logan Circle” (p3)
which they lived in for almost a decade, then sold in the fall of 2020 because there was a housing shortage in DC in the height of the pandemic. This first house was in what Margo deems a ‘transitioning’ neighbourhood:
The payout on the other side – once the city’s hottest restaurants have opened a few blocks away, once you’re within walking distance of not one, but two Whole Foods – is the reason you slog on” (p3).
Margo and Ian had not yet found a house to buy
So yeah, I knew it might take a minute to find the forever home, but clearly, this was the time to cash in. And who could argue with that logic after the row house, even with its flooding basement and bad DIY kitchen reno, sold in a single weekend for more than double what we’d paid?” (p3).
The start of the novel with these kinds of details, seemed promising.
So Margo and Ian move in an apartment in Shaw, thinking this would be for a couple of months until they buy their forever home. But 18 months later, and 11 failed bids later, Margo is getting desperate. She is trying very hard to have a baby, and putting off IVF partly because they have no infertility issues, but also partly because they cannot afford to take a big loan at the moment given they are saving all their money for a property. But in Margo’s mind, she cannot have a baby until she gets a bigger house, and meanwhile, the clock is ticking and she is getting desperate as the months pass. She has lost a number of bids because they went for a lot over the asking price and because some buyers could pay in cash – the usual reasons, in fact, for bids not succeeding. Margo also sees herself always in some kind of a race, against time, compared also to her friends – she compares herself with ex-colleague Erika, for instance, who started out around the same place and level as herself, but who moved into Wesley Heights into a Tudor for $2.5 mil and has started a family already. Feeling she is falling behind in life’s race, Margo’s desperation ratchets up and up as the novel progresses.
Then her estate agent notifies her of a property which has not yet been listed. It is in Grovemont,
“in the most desirable neighbourhood in the most desirable DC suburb of Bethesda” (p7).
This is Margo’s dream home, and knowing it is going to be listed for $1,250 mil, she knows she can bid for up to $1.3mil at a maximum, and that this will not be enough. So Margo becomes desperate to do a deal on the house before it gets listed, to get the jump ahead of all the other buyers, so that she can move into her forever home, get pregnant, have a baby, which she deems must all happen in the order, or else, they cannot happen at all.
The Grovement dream home is currently owned by Curt and Jack since 2015 when they paid $730K for it. Margo stalks the house, stalks Jack and the child, Penny, inveigles her way into a dinner invitation, and gets found out and consequently thrown out. Undeterred, she starts digging for dirt into Curt’s life to use as blackmail, and finds he is guilty of plagiarism of one of his students’ work, Dottie’s essay, which Curt recycles as a chapter in his book. Margo blackmails Curt to not list the house, but he calls her bluff, and so she has to find another way. Meanwhile, she has taken her eye off the ball where work is concerned, messes up, almost gets fired, and lies and deceives her way through all of this.
She also manipulates her husband, who is not at all keen on her underhanded methods. When he refuses to join her in her ruthless tactics, they quarrel, he storms out, and she makes his mother’s chicken, then sheds tears when he returns, to guilt him. Ian falls for this, as he seems to fall for all her manipulations.
“Before I leave, I stick a Post-it note to the fridge. Don’t forget to take some leftover chicken for lunch. XO. Subtext: You owe me” (p55).
Everything is a calculation for Margo. The novel depicts her as a sociopath or psychopath, who has no hesitation in hurting others, doing wrong, in manipulating others and situations, and who feels nothing apparently, except fury when thwarted. She is tunnel visioned:
“And literally everything is on the line.
No Dottie. No Blackmail.
No blackmail. No house.
No house. I will motherfucking die” (p140-141).
Also, no house equals no baby, in Margo’s mind.
The novel gets less and less interesting as it unrolls, being all about Margo’s over-the-top behaviour and madness, and shameful shenanigans, all in order to secure her dream property. The book is also cruder than it needs to be, perhaps to be provocative for comic value, but it is just crass really, not funny:
Ian stands up to hug me goodbye. He squeezes my ass as he does, and his boner jabs me through the front of his gym shorts. I think I can hear my vagina vacuum-sealing itself shut” (p140).
The title is misleading, because it is not about the best offer, or even how to make the best offer – it is about the lengths this desperate and mentally compromised woman would go to, to buy a house. It wasn’t actually a nice read, of a protagonist who is barely credible, a prop-villain really, in this supposedly dark comedy, who is willing to compromise morals, dignity, and even indulge in criminality. Somehow, the fun was lost quite early on in this debut novel. I do not think I will be tempted by the next Kashino to hit the shelves, unless it is significantly different.
Best Offer Wins
Marisa Kashino
Celadon Books, 2025
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