The Kind Worth Killing: A Novel

Monk’s House is a symbol of the chaos in Lily’s childhood. David names Monk’s House after Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s house because he wants to equate himself with the literary grandeur of Virginia Woolf. Although the house affords Lily many freedoms in her childhood, she remembers it as the location of her parents’ extravagant parties that normally end in drunkenness and arguing. Since the house is also the location of Lily’s trauma with Chet, she remembers it as an ominous house and one that she longs to escape. Lily kills Chet to protect the sanctity of the house, which she considers a haven until he enters it. Lily remembers that she loved to swim in the pool at Monk’s House, even though her mother never kept it clean. However, once Chet lurks around the pool, watching her in her bathing suit, Lily stops going into it. Lily decides to kill Chet is because she wants to preserve the innocence of her childhood and her home life in Monk’s House.

The Severson’s house in Kennewick is a motif that represents the façade of Miranda and Ted’s marriage. Since Miranda oversees the construction of the house, her insecurities and feelings about the marriage slip into the house’s physical nature. Kimball thinks that the house is monstrous because of the largeness and the excess of money that does not fit into the quiet nature of the Maine landscape. The excessiveness of the house correlates to Miranda’s feelings about the marriage: she only sees it for its financial value and so she squanders the money on the house because it is meaningless to her. The house also represents the moment that Miranda’s fascination with the marriage falls apart because as soon as she starts constructing the house, she decides to seduce Brad with the intention of murdering Ted. Lily deciding to lure Miranda to the house and have Brad bludgeon her to death reveals a sense of poetic justice because Miranda dies in the house where she planned to murder her husband.