Short Fiction Review: The Hollow by 'Pemi Aguda is a Story That Will Fold Your Mind

What is a house? It’s a simple, loaded question.

The Hollow by ‘Pemi Aguda follows Arit, an architect at the beginning of her career, one year out of university, set in a re-imagined version of Lagos, Nigeria.

Arit chooses to specialize in houses while her contemporaries "aspire to design government buildings and malls and banks and museums and memorials and schools and hotels, conventions of steel, muted cubes of concrete, sloping facades of timber, otherworldly curves of glass fiber..."

The passion Arit has for designing houses is initiated by her relationship with her uncle and her subsequent understanding of the deep histories each home contains.

‘Pemi Aguda, much like her protagonist, Arit, handles Madame Oni’s home with the care of a character in its own right, swollen with its own murky history. Through Arit’s careful eye, we are transported on a journey of discovery and realization not only of Arit’s personal trauma, but of the home’s and the family's it once protected. Aguda spreads these storylines out for us, masterfully folding them together, then in on themselves again, until the reader is surrounded every where they turn by the infinite time-warp that are the ever-shifting walls of Madame Oni’s home. That is, until Arit reclaims her power.

Concepts of time and space break down, rearrange, then re-materialize with new understanding in ‘Pemi Aguda’s haunting short fiction, The Hollow - an O. Henry Best Short Stories 2023 Prize Winner, also published on Zoetrope: All-Story. You can also read The Hollow and other short stories written by ‘Pemi Aguda in her debut collection, Ghostroots.

While reading The Hollow, I couldn’t help but think of what ‘Pemi Aguda said about judging the CRAFT Novelette Print Prize 2025 (which closes on March 16th for anyone who is interested in submitting their novelette to this award!) - ‘Pemi Aguda says this about her ideal novelette:

“My ideal novelette would be swallowed in one sitting, swinging wickedly from sentence to sentence, image to image, until the ending proves that not one word could have been added or removed. Strangeness and disorientation—on the level of language or story—can be propulsive engines for this not-quite-short-but-not-quite-long form of the novelette because they provide an unmooring that makes one want to hold on tightly to the author for the ride. Whether traditional or experimental, ultimately, I love to be told a good story, to be surprised or cut, to remember the characters, while being delighted by the way a sentence spins out and curves back in, leaving me a little wrecked.”

Ironically, this is exactly how I felt as I read The Hollow.

After reading Aguda's evocative, mystical, and piercing short fiction, I felt as though I had just been on a roller coaster through the space-time continuum itself with only the vehicle of Arit and her words to cling to.

The Hollow and its themes stuck with me far beyond the last page. I thought about Madame Oni’s house and its protection as I washed the walls of my apartment. I reflected on cycles of trauma as I circled water and soap over the dishes. I remembered Arit’s precision as she sketched out blueprints of Madame Oni’s home while I wiped dust off the baseboards’ edges in my own.

What is a house?

Arit doesn’t ask, What is a home?

Decades-old nicotine bleeds down the bathroom walls of my apartment. No matter how many times I wash the walls, it always comes back. I picture some past tenant smoking in the bathtub, her toe in the faucet, a glass of wine on the floor beside her.

What traces of me will future tenants wipe away from this house?

The Hollow by ‘Pemi Aguda offers an intimate perspective on the deep, turning, and secretive lives of houses and the pieces of us we leave behind with them.

Have you read The Hollow? If not, I highly recommend reading it on Zoetrope: All-Story as linked to on ‘Pemi Aguda’s author page (just hit the “Refresh” button after clicking if the web page for Zoetrope: All-Story doesn’t load at first) or in ‘Pemi Aguda’s short story collection, Ghostroots.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below!