RFBC #15: I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
You know what? Sometimes the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley. That, unfortunately, appears to be what happened to the fifteenth episode of Radio Free Book Club in which we discussed Lorrie Moore’s novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. Somewhere between the recording and the airing, the audio file disappeared. So it goes.
Disappearance, or maybe an unwillingness to disappear, is a big factor in Moore’s book. It’s a weird combination of historical novel and zombie road trip, interweaving the journal entries of a 19th century boardinghouse proprietress with the story of Finn and Lucy, estranged lovers whose relationship is all the more strange because Lucy has died by suicide—which doesn’t stop her from popping out of the ground and hopping into Finn’s car. Over the course of the narrative, Lucy’s mortal flesh deteriorates like Griffin Dunne’s in An American Werewolf in London, but Finn is not much disturbed. Their dysfunctional relationship continues as before.
A question: Is it necrophilia if the corpse initiates sex?
Perhaps a more pressing question is, why did so many people seem to love this novel? Our panel of readers—Dan Barden, Robin Beery, Christine Hudson, and Steve Woods—sure didn’t. While the club members granted a certain amount of deference to Moore as a literary genius and an amazing stylist, none of them really enjoyed the book. There are some subtle surprises—the possible identity of a mysterious boarder at the Jumping Rest Tourist Lodge Home is one of them. It may have something to say about loss and love. It has some trademark Lorrie Moore zing. But on the whole, we found I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home to be jokey, but not much fun, odd-funny but not ha-ha funny.
So, no, you can’t listen to our discussion, and for that we apologize. And while we would never dissuade you from reading and enjoying whatever you want—especially a book by a writer as excellent and accomplished as Lorrie Moore—I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is not the Lorrie Moore book we’d recommend.
Sorry we lost the recording. We for sure didn’t lose the next one: a lively discussion of Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto. Nothing a-gley this time. And please give a listen to all our other shows.
