Guest House [Paperback]

Barbara K. Richardson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2010

In Guest House, a shy, ingenious boy cracks open Melba Burns' solo world, and she sees--almost too late--someone genuinely worth protecting.

Melba gets stopped in her in her high-achieving tracks at the site of a terrible accident. She parks her car, quits her job and burrows into her beloved farmhouse seeking peace. But peace and Melba's new roommate, JoLee Garry, have never met. JoLee brings boyfriends, booze and layoffs into Melba's household, not to mention an alcoholic husband who has kidnapped their son Matt.

The disintegrating Garry family trails a series of unexpected guests into Melba's world, changing her forever. When you let it, love beats all.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Richardson, who is part comedienne, part landscape artist and part Zen master, reveals 
the vulnerability of her characters with utmost delicacy . . . there is salvation here, 
and it happens in this addictively-readable and often hilarious novel."
--Lisa Jones, author of BROKEN: A LOVE STORY

"The people living in GUEST HOUSE are as particular and real--and flawed--as our neighbors, our friends, ourselves. In this remarkably generous novel Barbara Richardson chronicles not only the betrayals and sorrows of the human heart, but the love and hope and caring that heals it."
 --Molly Gloss, author of WILD LIFE

"No way are books dead. Not with writers like this out there."    --Jesse Kornbluth, Head Butler

"GUEST HOUSE is perhaps the most rapid-fire novel of domestic hope and strife you're likely to read all summer."    --Ben Fulton, The Salt Lake Tribune
     
"The one Oprah missed."  --Anna Nair, Shelf Unbound Magazine

About the Author

Barbara Richardson's debut novel Guest House, a contemporary look at the families we create, was an Eric Hoffer Medal fiction finalist. Her second novel, Tributary, comes out this summer. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University. Her work has appeared in "Northwest Review," "Quarterly West" and "Dialogue." She lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado.

Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: Bay Tree Publishing; 1st edition (March 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981957714
• ISBN-13: 978-0981957715
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The things we do for love. I have delivered sailboats, sold puptents, herded sixth graders and planted hundreds of trees as a residential landscape designer, all in order to write.

Guest House--my first novel--brings together kids I have taught, cities I have loved, women I've admired and the ongoing motivation to see, honor and make good homes for neglected children. This theme motivates me deeply.

My nephew grew up in Atomic City Idaho, population 24, shooting pool and mixing drinks in the Twin Buttes Bar. He learned to drive a stick shift and skin rattlesnakes at age 13. His stories stuck like cheatgrass in my imagination. I've traveled to Atomic City twice to research Guest House. I felt I had never breathed so freely. Do all writers love the middle of nowhere? I can't say, but I do.

I also love trees, natural ethics, old farmhouses and a handful of books. There are writers whose sensibilities elevate the whole human enterprise. I aim to be one of them.


Please be my guest at the Guest House website:
http://www.barbarakrichardson.com/index.html

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new and talented author, February 27, 2010

By 

Nel Rand - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guest House (Paperback)

I have just finished GUEST HOUSE and I loved it. I rarely want to sit down and read a book all over again but that is just what I'm doing with this one. Barbara Richardson's novel has the richness of style of a Michael Chabon, the poetic prose of Janet Fitch, the sparse opulence of Annie Proulx, and the humor of Fannie Flag, yet it is her own original voice. I admit that when I first started reading I thought there were too many Point-of-view characters, and not enough of Melba Burns as a clear-cut protagonist but as I read on and got into the rhythm of it I found myself liking the different points of view. I loved the fast-paced, wham-bam hurling language and the toughness of it all. The characters were brave and angry in a world that offered them little. This is a novel deserving of awards and a great book to discuss in a book club. I can't wait to read more from this new and talented writer.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Keep Thinking about Melba, March 4, 2010

By 

Joyce Phelps - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guest House (Paperback)

I know that this book affected me in a "down to my bones" way. Melba is a lady I think about a lot and wonder how she's doing and how she does it. I want to live in her house and dig in her garden and sit on the porch and have a glass of wine with Gene. Barbara is a beautiful writer no doubt, but for me sometimes her story would come across a little too vague, Melba would be just a little too passive, and then bam! the writing would become perfectly descriptive and down and dirty, real life stuff. I would find myself thinking - yeah, that's right, that's how it is and I've never seen that written down before, how did she know!

The story engaged and suprised me all along the way.

Barbara is a gifted and seasoned writer, I would like reading about anything she writes, because she can sure tell a story.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, February 27, 2010

By 

Jeffrey Fuller (Boulder, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guest House (Paperback)

Not long ago I obtained a pre-publication copy of Guest House. I made the wonderful mistake of reading it late one night as I stood in the kitchen, scotch in hand, waiting for the noise of the day's events to be overwhelmed by the desire for sleep. An hour later I was still standing, marking in the margins those places that astonished me.

The characters in Guest House come to life as they careen through the hit-and-run chaos of a wildly dysfunctional family. Richardson, who has an eye for the quirky grace that shows up in the unlikeliest of places, brings such a generous and unflinching gaze to her world that I felt not just invited, but compelled to follow. In the end, her generosity rubs off; I cared deeply about her characters, and not just the innocent ones.

Guest House is a banquet: tragic and funny, wry and sexy, dark and triumphant. Like the main character, Melba, who wants "to sink into the bones of things," I found myself looking at my own world in a different way, newly reminded that love is found in the glorious imperfection of things.