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Start giftingTenemental
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreA heartfelt coming-of-age memoir about taking the unbeaten path, owning a home, and holding it all—including yourself—together.
Detouring from the traditional timeline of marriage–kids–house, twenty-six-year-old Vikki Warner skips straight to homeownership. She buys a run-down three-story house in Providence, Rhode Island, and suddenly finds herself responsible for a rotating cast of colorful tenants. Adulthood comes with unforeseen challenges: backed-up sewage, gentrification, global economic downturn. Tenemental is a candid portrait of how sharing space profoundly reshapes our lives, and forces us to grow into ourselves.
Vikki Warner is an acquisitions editor with Blackstone Publishing and a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Bust, the Boston Globe, and Zagat, among others.
Narrator Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flare for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013. Her natural, mellifluous style reveals her rich alto training, love of storytelling, and ease in front of a microphone. Though a longtime New Englander, Rebecca Mitchell was born and raised in the Midwest. The myriad accents and dialects from her various homes, as well as those from her extensive travels, find their way into the characters she portrays. A collector of personality traits, idiosyncrasies, vocal styles, and personal histories, Rebecca infuses her narration with such elements, deepening the richness of her work.
Reviews
“Forget the marriage plot; twenty-six-year-old Warner is after a plot of land. She buys a century-old triple-decker house…In this ebullient memoir, she excavates the experiences of being landlady to that ‘needy bitch’ of a house—plus tenants who ‘break bathtubs with sledgehammers,’ the permeating smell of reefer and sounds of Black Sabbath, and a late-night near debacle involving burnt toast.”
“Tenemental describes some of the challenges of the landlady life, from the tenant who destroyed his apartment for ‘renovations’ and then left, to the crack house across the street, to a mysterious rash of fires in the neighborhood…[The house] has given her a respect for staying power, for those who remain and grapple with the reality of their communities over the long haul.”
“In this hilarious and down-to-earth memoir, Warner provides a rare glimpse of life as an emotionally present landlady…Heartfelt and fascinating, this is perfect for readers curious about the person on the other side of their rent checks.”
“Things in PennHenge may have been dirty, broken, or misaligned, but the author was still happy for what she had created in a world obsessed by illusions of perfect—and ultimately unsustainable—lifestyles. The book is not only a story of a young woman’s often hilarious (mis)adventures in homeownership; it is also a thoughtful meditation on how living spaces both reflect and shape the individuals who inhabit them. Refreshingly original reading.”
“Narrator Rebecca Mitchell’s unbridled enthusiasm mirrors author Vikki Warner’s plunge into property management…The naïveté and earnestness that could have sunk Warner appear to be what pull her past her biggest obstacles.”
“Full of color, life, and that special type of real, earned wisdom that only comes with taking risks and trusting completely in your own young self.”
“Cheers to Vikki Warner, whose tenacious and inspiring coming-of-age story gives voice to a new generation of independent women and grown-ass boss ladies.”
“Vikki Warner’s memoir is wry, smart, personal, and pretty damn punk rock in its story about home, property, and life as a semi-together feminist twentysomething trying to balance utopian visions of community, friendship, and romance with the harsh realities of crappy tenants, a dilapidated Victorian, and those brutal New England winters.”
“The incredibly raw, touching, and laugh-out-loud story of a woman figuring out how to get by in the world while doing as little harm to it as possible, and ode to the messiness of life.”
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