This ingenious road trip-cum-ghost story with a historical sociopolitical leaning is cult American author Lorrie Moore’s first novel in quite a while. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home kicks off in 2016, with suspended high school teacher Finn driving to New York to visit his older brother Max, who is in a hospice. During this visit, Finn is informed that his ex-girlfriend has died, and travels back home to Navy Lake in the Midwest, the location of his past flame’s grave, digging her up to take her on a road trip.
When Finn stops off at a hotel, en route to Tennessee, he discovers a journal written by a woman named Elizabeth – one of the hotel’s previous owners, around the time the American Civil War ended. It becomes apparent that Elizabeth was no stranger to death herself, and Moore tantalises the reader with excerpts from this journal, serialised throughout the pages of this novel.
A work, then, which not only has Moore’s dark humour and sense of irony regarding life and death but also this novelist’s acute social observations. Think of I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home as the literary equivalent of an episode of Six Feet Under directed by Jim Jarmusch and written by William Faulkner.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore (Faber)
Price: £16.99/£22.99 audiobook. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
Want more books?
The latest reviews, interviews, features and more, from Wales and beyond.