Bring the House Down: A Novel

by Charlotte Runcie

Overview

ONE OF GLAMOUR'S BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS • A theater critic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe writes a vicious one-star review of a struggling actress he has a one-night stand with in this sharply funny, feminist tinderbox.

“Excellent…brilliant…a fiery reminder that we still have so far to go when it comes to men behaving poorly and getting away with it.”—LitHub

"A binge-worthy novel that explores our obsessions, our inner critic, and who we think we are in person and in print. Intimate, real, and really funny. This one has teeth.” —Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get It and Such a Fun Age

Alex Lyons always has his mind made up by the time the curtain comes down at a performance—the show either deserves a five-star rave or a one-star pan. Anything in between is meaningless. On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he doesn’t deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair’s show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress.

Unaware that she’s gone home with the theater critic who’s just written a career-ending review of her, Hayley wakes up at his apartment to see his scathing one-star critique in print on the kitchen table, and she’s not sure which humiliation offends her the most. So she revamps her show into a viral sensation critiquing Alex Lyons himself—entitled son of a famous actress, serial philanderer, and by all accounts a terrible man. Yet Alex remains unapologetic. As his reputation goes up in flames, he insists on telling his unvarnished version of events to his colleague, Sophie. Through her eyes, we see that the deeper she gets pulled into his downfall, the more conflicted she becomes. After all, there are always two sides to every story.

A brilliant Trojan horse of a book about art, power, misogyny, and female rage, Bring the House Down is a searing, insightful, and often hilarious debut that captures the blurred line between reality and performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385551076
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

CHARLOTTE RUNCIE was most recently The Daily Telegraph’s radio critic and senior arts columnist. She has also written for magazines and newspapers including The Times and The Guardian, spending years in the culture trenches reviewing shows at the Edinburgh Festival. A graduate of Cambridge University, Charlotte was longlisted for the 2023 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Bridport Prize, and was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2025-04-04
A negative review and a heedless one-night stand lead to the cancellation of a respected newspaper critic.

After dashing off a damning takedown of a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe—part of the annual summer arts festival—attractive, promiscuous Alex Lyons thinks nothing of spending the night with the selfsame woman performer, Hayley Sinclair. The next morning, Hayley reads the review, realizes she’s slept with its author, and sets off down a path of revenge. Renaming her performanceThe Alex Lyons Experience, she tells her tale of outrage and invites others to contribute. The result is a hit show and a tsunami of attention that goes viral, branding Alex as “the poster boy for indiscriminate sexual trawling. The man with no moral compass.” Runcie’s up-to-date debut cleverly—and comically—spans the gender issues exposed here while also widening the lens to include other topics. Sophie Rigden, a junior colleague of Alex’s, is working and living alongside him in the newspaper’s Edinburgh rental apartment, becoming his witness and audience (and the book's narrator). Sophie is both a critic and an obituary writer, as well as the breadwinner in her relationship with Josh, an academic, and Arlo, their 14-month-old child. Her background is very different from Alex’s, he being the son of a “national treasure,” the actress Dame Judith Lyons. Nepotism, misogyny, motherhood, culture, criticism, love, and death all come under the spotlight as Alex’s career sinks and Sophie’s rises while their relationship shifts into perilous territory. The clarity of Runcie's narration and her ability to consider both sides of an argument render the deeper issues digestible while, on the surface, the partying, drinking, distinctive characters and their predicaments keep the wheels spinning. It all makes for an unusual, thought-provoking, multilayered read that book groups will enjoy debating.

A smart novel that carefully considers the shifting sands of life.

Kirkus Reviews

“An astounding debut about the fraught relationship between artist and critic, truth and publicity, men and women. Bring the House Down reminds us how unwise it is to make easy judgments about people or art—which does not stop me from giving Charlotte Runcie five big stars.

New York Times bestselling author of Wellness and Nathan Hill

Bring the House Down is sharp-witted, wise, and authentic—what a fierce, fantastically funny read.

New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun Claire Lombardo

Bring the House Down is a bitingly sharp, witty, and multi-layered exploration of rage and art. Runcie is so good on nuance, on interrogating the good and bad of meticulously-drawn characters we come to love even when we feel we shouldn't – all the while delving into questions of complicity, goodness, and how our own desires muddy the water.

author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread Sophie Mackintosh

Bring the House Down is an agile, addictive story exploring art, ethics, the role of the critic, vindication of female rage, and the public appetite for blood. Runcie is sharply attuned to the vast uncomfortable grey areas of gender and power relations, navigating them with wry, revelatory observations that are devastatingly acute. Atmospheric, propulsive, electric.

author of Utopia Heidi Sopinka

I read this in a day and wished there were another hundred pages so I could just keep reading. Funny, precise, and such fun. And now that I've finished it the characters are lodged in my brain like they're real people I used to know.

New York Times bestselling author of The Husbands Holly Gramazio

An enticing debut. This is a binge-worthy novel that explores our obsessions, our inner critic, and who we think we are in person and in print. Intimate, real, and really funny. This one has teeth.

New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get Kiley Reid

A novel about losing and finding yourself again, about who we are versus who we think we are, and about the inner lives we rarely reveal. Runcie’s characters feel so real I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself next to them on the train or to overhear them on the streets of Edinburgh.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

I devoured Bring the House Down—and when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. Charlotte Runcie combines her searing observation and immaculate pacing with infectious prose in this compelling, comedic and seriously clever debut novel. I can't wait for everyone else to read it so I can finally talk about it at length.

author of Why Women Grow Alice Vincent

A turbulent and harrowing ride on what it really means to criticize a culture. . .The difficult genius of Bring the House Down is how hard it hammers the idea of there really being two sides to every story. . .Runcie writes with a voice that can only be achieved through the bird’s eye view of an objective, observant journalist. . .[A] formidable debut novel.”
—Chicago Review of Books

"So delightfully snackable that you may, as I did, gulp it down in two or three sittings. . .This deeply entertaining novel [is] well worth the price of admission.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Accomplished. . . A smart, sharp and compulsively readable first novel that provides food for thought on a variety of complex topics. . . Runcie strikes a perfect balance, and instead of tub-thumping or finger-pointing, explores each issue with nuance and evenhandedness. Serious and thought-provoking [but] also fun and frequently witty. . . [Bring the House Down is] a five-star triumph.”
—Washington Post

"Biting satire and surprising emotional depth earn this one a rave.”
—Boston Globe

"Entertaining and very timely. . . One of the most enjoyable novels I've read in a long time. . . Runcie's verbal wit, narrative chops and emotional subtlety rendered [a hatchet job] impossible."
—The Guardian

“This darkly funny feminist book asks big questions about cancel culture, art and revenge.”
—Good Housekeeping

"Bring the House Down considers what role theater can have in a community with more humor that you’d think was possible.”
—Elle, Best Books of the Summer

“Runcie gets theater right in this excellent debut novel. . . It’s a brilliant look at the utter madness that is the [Edinburgh Festival] Fringe, a deep consideration of criticism and art (and parenthood as a professional), and a fiery reminder that we still have so far to go when it comes to men behaving poorly and getting away with it.”
—LitHub

“An unusual, thought-provoking, multilayered read that book groups will enjoy debating. A smart novel that carefully considers the shifting sands of life."
—Kirkus (starred review)

“A sharp, absorbing, thoroughly entertaining send-up of gender politics, the dynamic between critics and artists, and the struggle for women to balance careers and motherhood.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“An ebullient piece of retribution for an unrepentant jerk [and] a nuanced and thoughtful take on gender and power.”
—Bloomberg Businessweek, 10 Best Books of the Summer

“[A clever] debut. . . Runcie takes a thought-provoking look at art’s complex relationship with criticism and public outrage. This dramedy packs a punch.”
—Publisher's Weekly

“Runcie's story is one we can all relate to—whether we're aspiring stage actors or not. . . By all accounts juicy and so real, I read this book in a single weekend.”
—Glamour

“Bring the House Down is sharp-witted, wise, and authentic—what a fierce, fantastically funny read.”
—Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was

“An astounding debut about the fraught relationship between artist and critic, truth and publicity, men and women. Bring the House Down reminds us how unwise it is to make easy judgments about people or art—which does not stop me from giving Charlotte Runcie five big stars.”
—Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of Wellness and The Nix

“An enticing debut. This is a binge-worthy novel that explores our obsessions, our inner critic, and who we think we are in person and in print. Intimate, real, and really funny. This one has teeth.”
—Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get It and Such a Fun Age

“I read this in a day and wished there were another hundred pages so I could just keep reading. Funny, precise, and such fun. And now that I've finished it the characters are lodged in my brain like they're real people I used to know.”
—Holly Gramazio, New York Times bestselling author of The Husbands

“Funny, bold and tender, Bring the House Down is a biting study of power, gender and the meaning of art. I loved this incendiary debut.”
—Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of author of Weyward and The Sirens

“A daring dive into the excesses of our rating culture, Bring The House Down searches for the nuance and complexity we lose when we reduce our experiences to one-star/five-star, best/worst, or love/hate binaries. Runcie’s propulsive and tender prose interrogates the critic’s role and allegiances in a world where art has become a product like any other. A fascinating read.”
—Camille Bordas, author of The Material and How to Behave in a Crowd

"Bring the House Down is a bitingly sharp, witty, and multi-layered exploration of rage and art. Runcie is so good on nuance, on interrogating the good and bad of meticulously-drawn characters we come to love even when we feel we shouldn't – all the while delving into questions of complicity, goodness, and how our own desires muddy the water."
—Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread

"A novel about losing and finding yourself again, about who we are versus who we think we are, and about the inner lives we rarely reveal. Runcie’s characters feel so real I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself next to them on the train or to overhear them on the streets of Edinburgh."
—Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher, Starling Days and Harmless Like You

"I devoured Bring the House Down—and when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. Charlotte Runcie combines her searing observation and immaculate pacing with infectious prose in this compelling, comedic and seriously clever debut novel. I can't wait for everyone else to read it so I can finally talk about it at length."
—Alice Vincent, author of Why Women Grow

"Bring the House Down is an agile, addictive story exploring art, ethics, the role of the critic, vindication of female rage, and the public appetite for blood. Runcie is sharply attuned to the vast uncomfortable grey areas of gender and power relations, navigating them with wry, revelatory observations that are devastatingly acute. Atmospheric, propulsive, electric."
—Heidi Sopinka, author of Utopia

From the Publisher