I told a friend that I’d just read Lorrie Moore’s new novel, “I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home,” and they followed up with the logical next question that anyone would ask, “Is it good?”
I couldn’t answer the question, which is odd, given that I’d literally just read the book.
I mean the book was wonderful, captivating from beginning to end. I started it the moment the cabin door closed on a flight from Charleston to Chicago, where I was traveling to celebrate my mom’s 83rd birthday, just about making it through the entire story by the time I landed, carving out a little time later in the afternoon to finish it off.
“I Am Homeless…” consists of two threads that ultimately join. The first, which opens the novel, is a series of apparent epistles by a woman running a post-Civil War boardinghouse to her sister. The second, which is the bulk of the novel, is the story of Finn, a private school history teacher suspended from his job who receives news of a tragedy while visiting his dying brother in hospice.
The novel becomes an extended meditation and exploration of the experience of grief as these characters confront the unthinkable, that the most important people in our lives can be suddenly gone.
But is it a good book? I don’t know. I’m sort of wondering if this is not a particularly illuminating question in this specific case.
Part of what’s going on for me as an individual reader is my long-standing attachment to Moore’s writing. There are some writers in a reader’s life who seem to work at a frequency to which you are perfectly attuned, and she is one of those writers for me. Her short stories and novels have always been welcome company in my brain.
Part of it also is the book’s subject matter, grief, an emotion to which I have no greater claim or more experience than anyone else, but about which I’ve spent a considerable amount of time contemplating. “I Am Homeless…” takes on the issue by becoming a ghost story, or maybe a story about a psychological break precipitated by grief. For all the money in the world, I couldn’t tell you which interpretation is correct, or even if neither is correct!
I think the honest answer to my friend’s question is to recognize that some books in our lives are not to be judged or understood, but simply to be experienced.
Perhaps I should apologize that I have no rational, critical faculties to bring to this book, except that I can’t say I’m all that sorry. Sometimes the rational fails us. I’m confident some readers will be haunted (pardon the pun) by the book as I am. Others will be baffled, and wonder what people like me see in the book. I wouldn’t gainsay that response for a moment.
Looking for guidance, I went to an interview that Moore did with Brad Listi on his “OtherPpl” podcast. At the start of the interview, Listi has asked a question off mic to which Moore responds, “I have no system … I have no system. I only have instincts.”
It somewhat gradually becomes clear that Moore is talking about notions of death and the afterlife rooted in the faith she was raised in and her experience of the world since, but “I have only instincts” strikes me as a productive way of thinking about both reading and writing at times like this.
Was it a good book? My life would’ve been lesser had I not read it. That’s what my instincts say.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
2. “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese
3. “Emily, Alone” by Stewart O’Nan
4. “Apples Never Fall” by Liane Moriarty
5. “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult
— Beverly P., Chicago
I think the warmth of Kent Haruf’s “Our Souls at Night” will be a great reading companion for Beverly.
1. “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
2. “Leviathan Falls” by James S.A. Corey
3. “A Desolation Called Peace” by Arkady Martine
4. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
5. “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson
— William P., Oak Park
William is pretty immersed in science fiction, probably my weakest personal area of knowledge and experience, but hopefully William Gibson’s propulsive “Pattern Recognition” hasn’t been on William’s radar because I think he’ll quite enjoy it.
1. “Now Is Not the Time to Panic” by Kevin Wilson
2. “Today Will Be Different” by Maria Semple
3. “Less Is Lost” by Andrew Sean Greer
4. “Chang and Eng” by Darin Strauss
5. “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn
— Blaise M., Chicago
OK, I’m looking for a book with just the right degree of weird. I’ve got it! “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com
