This week, we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore.
Since my mom’s passing, I’ve had two recurring dreams: in the first, all of the teeth on the right side of my mouth disintegrate; they fall out like enamel crumbs, leaving my cheek a caved-in wreck (Google tells me that the meaning of this dream is that I must be going through some kind of monumental loss, which — ha, ha). In the second, I’m in a crowded room and everyone is visiting with each other and my mom is there, somehow; I know she shouldn’t be, but I’m so glad she is, so I just stand there, listening to her, absorbing her presence and trying not to disturb the dream’s ecosystem.
Somehow, Lorrie Moore’s latest novel,
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, feels like a combination of both of these dreams. Which I say as the highest of compliments: it’s always both unnerving and gratifying (and faintly queasy-making) to meet a book that’s speaking the same fractured language as you are.
It’s always both unnerving and gratifying (and faintly queasy-making) to meet a book that’s speaking the same fractured language as you.
|
In the book, the narrator, Finn, has to navigate two impossible, compounding losses. He’s visiting his brother in hospice when he gets a text that his on-again-off-again, therapy-clown ex-girlfriend has committed suicide. What happens next is both pleasantly surprising and pleasingly grotesque, so I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say: this is the road trip novel of the summer.
The book’s tone is heightened across the board — the hilarity, the strangeness, the off-kilter landscape — and the language is exacting, lovely, heartbreaking, and absolutely correct. Moore understands that loss is visceral and gross and uncanny, but how there's a small, lovely truth on the other side of that coin: if we had someone it hurts this much to lose, doesn’t that mean we’ve been lucky, too?
Moore understands that loss is visceral and gross and uncanny.
|
Throw in a dash of John Wilkes Booth-related conspiracy theories, an upended society, and an empty cat litter box, and you’ve got Moore’s
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. We don't deserve such a confounding and incredible author.
If I have to feel seen by a book, I’m glad that Lorrie Moore is the one doing the observing.