Author(s): Lorrie Moore

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From one of the most celebrated imaginations in American literature, Lorrie Moore's new novel is a magic  box of longing and surprise.

Lorrie Moore’s first novel since A Gate at the Stairs—a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heart.

A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all…

With her distinctive, irresistible wordplay and singular wry humor and wisdom, Lorrie Moore has given us a magic box of longing and surprise as she writes about love and rebirth and the pull towards life. Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told which may or may not be true.

STELLA'S REVIEW:
An enigmatic novel that is as compelling as its title. My first encounter with Lorrie Moore was another wonderfully entitled work, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? This was her second novel, published in the mid-90s, and revolved around a middle-aged woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for her young adolescent self. Centred around an amusement park the ferris wheel featured largely, always looming in the backdrop. I remember it for its sharp writing and keen observation. Moore’s fourth novel, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, is even more closely observed and has such verve. It’s a wild ride — elegiac and metaphysical. It’s intriguing and mystifying. Just as you start to pin it down it whirls off, angling towards something just beyond. It’s 2016. America is tipping itself into the abyss. Finn, a teacher on enforced leave (his state of mind is far from perfect), is attending to his brother at a hospice until he is called away by a call from his ex-girlfriend’s book group chum. But wait! The first chapter is a million miles from this. Someone is writing a letter. The language is arcane. The tone familial. It’s a letter to her dear sister. As we read on, we deduce that the letter-penner is the landlady of a boarding house near the close of the American Civil War. It’s a letter of complaint and later (more letters follow interspersed with Finn’s story) confessional about her interactions with one of her lodgers and his eventual death. And death or, more accurately, loss, is at the centre of this novel. Finn is lost, his brother is losing the battle to stay alive, his ex-girlfriend, Lily, is in limbo — well, actually, she is undead, and the landlady’s confession reveals a death. Sounds a bit glum? Well, it’s not. It’s hilariously funny in the way that the macabre can be and the relationship between Finn and Lily (after she’s risen out of the dirt, a few worms in situ, from the green cemetery) is charged with energy and, dare I say it, life, as they embark on a road trip to find her final resting place. The dialogue throughout the novel, whether it’s Finn clumsily attempting to cheer up his brother, the banter about how Lily looks in her undead guise, or the landlady’s dismissal of her lodger, is sharp and sparking with energy. The observations of human weakness, kindness, and contempt (Lily is a thorny prospect dead or alive), are wry and sometimes devastating. On these lunatic fringes, we are all standing on the edge watching others go before us. Moore reminds us we might fall in. But then again, we could always go home.
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"Is it an allegory? Is it real? It doesn't matter. Exploring sibling love, death, and longing, it's a novel with big questions, no answers, and it's absolutely brilliant." -Emily Firetog, Lit Hub, "The 28 Novels You Need to Read This Summer"
"An exquisite exploration of grief, longing, and our relationship with the past . . . mixing comedy with tragedy, and exploring what it means to be alive." -Kristyn Kusek Lewis, Real Simple
"Moore's sterling literary reputation is anchored most firmly to her short stories, but in her long-awaited fourth novel, her prose is just as breathtakingly crystalline, her humor wily and piquant. . . . Moore's exhilarating dialogue is acrobatic, her descriptions ravishing. . . . A curious spin on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, with frissons of George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), Moore's unnerving, gothic, acutely funny, lyrically metaphysical, and bittersweet tale is an audacious, mind-bending plunge into the mysteries of illness, aberration, death, grief, memory, and love." -Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"Moore is revered for her wit, and fans will not be disappointed by the novel's dark humor. The prose might be her finest." -Claire Messud, Harper's
"Moore has long been an expert at mood-setting, and the plot lines develop an uncanny resonance, Moore's fear of death, ghost stories and our inability to save people while managing to be, in a very Moore-ian way, weirdly funny." -Mark Athitakis, L.A. Times
"Thoughtful and witty. . . . The author's fans will love it, and those new to Moore will want to see what else they've been missing." -Publishers Weekly
"A wry, shape-shifting meditation on how we might continue to commune with the dead. . . . Both playful and poignant, this story of siblings and mental health slips the bonds of time and mortality. It bears Moore's s trademark psychological depth and humor. At the sentence level, the work is never less than a revelation." -Rebecca Foster, Shelf Awareness
"[Moore] manages the impossible in her writing: every other sentence is a gut-punch or the funniest line you've ever read, and it coheres into some of the truest writing about life-for what is life if not constantly either hilarious or devastating, and often both? I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a ghost story, a love story, a family elegy, and a search for answers both tangible and ephemeral: it's the world of Lorrie Moore, beckoning us back in." -LitHub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2023"

Author Biography: Lorrie Moore is the award-winning author of five story collections, three novels, and a children's book. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize, now the Women's Prize, and she has received numerous accolades from the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After serving for almost three decades as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Moore is now the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.