Customer Reviews

The House Beautiful

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Allison Burnett has succeeded in creating a literary character so unique and thoroughly painted that in his first novel CHRISTOPHER B.K. Troop emerged as a middle aged, overweight, fussy, alcoholic gay man whose distorted views of his world provided us with some of the finest comic writing of the past few years. Happily, Burnett has given us another installment in what many of us hope will be a continuing saga of this strangely loveable dreamer.

B.K. Troop has just inherited a Manhattan brownstone from his beloved friend Sasha Buchwitz, allowing him to move form his meager quarters into a large house he calls The House Beautiful - with large mortgage payments, payments he can only meet by taking in renters. This event opens the opportunity for Troop to fulfill his dream of being the muse and champion of artists. By advertising the rooms in his new edifice as `low rent' he attracts artists of all types - the sole proviso being that those selected as tenants repay his generosity by actively pursuing their particular art form.

And so we gradually meet his tenants: Carl Alan Dealy is a hygienically challenged actor waiting for audition calls that never come; Michael is a philosopher whose musings on his own character serve as fodder for his writings; Mary Pilago is a lesbian singer-songwriter who concentrates more on transient bed mates than on practicing her guitar and singing; Miranda Buchner is an Expressionist painter waiting for her `big show' while she pines for Michael's attentions; Louise D'Aprix is a writer committed to her typewriter to create the longest novel ever written. Into this hot bed of artists playing their desires for are against their escapades with sensual needs enters one Adrian Malloy, a very young lad carrying a garbage bag of what Troop perceives as vast pages of poetry and writings. In reality Adrian is an astronomy student who has fled to Manhattan to escape his confining Midwest home of his recently deceased parents, people with oddly occult ties to the unknowing Troop!

How Troop influences the lives of these characters (while simultaneously dealing with his new lover, Vietnamese cook Pip who proves to be a truly colorful number!) is the playing field on which Burnett weaves his fascinatingly integrated tales from another city (in some ways related to Armisted Maupin's San Francisco `Tales of the City' series). Troop may be a demanding queen but he is also the loving and caring stimulus for those disparate but co-dependent tenants. His particular devotion to drawing out the `poet' in Adrian is witty and wise and lovely. "A biologist is able to tell you why a fly is able to sustain itself in flight. Only a poet can describe why it annoys you."

Burnett's gift (and a superb writer he is!) lies in his ability to create strong characters, exploring each of them thoroughly while very carefully maintaining an interaction among all of them. Each artist contributes at times inadvertently but always cohesively to the changes that occur in the summer of communal living. But always at the helm is the wholly engrossing B.K. Troop, besieged by misadventures in love, at times hilarious but with equal portions of compassion as a true Impresario. Think Diaghilev, Tennessee Williams, Divine, with a dollop of Gertrude Stein and Troop begins to come into focus. Burnett knows his craft well. He is simply wildly entertaining while remaining a highly literate and brilliant writer. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 06

Brilliant! Again, I am extremely impressed with Mr. Allison Burnett's witty pen and exceptionally well drawn characters. I found myself laughing out loud throughout this wonderful book, and thoroughly enjoying protagonist B.K. Troop's well meaning and sometimes clumsy interactions with the tenants of the large house he's recently inherited. Allison Burnett is showing himself to be a writer to be reckoned with; a new, original voice in American fiction that we're fortunate to be watching evolve.

I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy well written novels that embody all of the best virtues of fiction writing. Thank you, Mr. Burnett, for allowing us to once again enjoy the adventures of B.K. Troop.

I picked "The House Beautiful" up at the recommendation of a friend - thought it would be great reading on vacation...couldn't put it down! I was enthralled immediately by the wit and humor of Allison Burnett...read it!!

I loved Allison Burnett's absolutely crazy and wonderful novel, The House Beautiful. This novel is charming, engaging, very funny, bizarre and sometimes gross, just like the New York City it portrays to perfection. Burnett writes an all-out love song for New York, the very special New York of all those who want something more than what they are supposed to want. It is a paean (and a send-up) to those who do everything to get to the big city and then do everything to stay, to live and to suffer there, all in the name of art, in the name of the individual and in the name of life. How many thousands of people have come to New York and for the first time ever found themselves finally at home? This novel was written for all of us, and also for all the others who don't find New York to be their original womb but find it interesting and invigorating and fascinating. This novel is all that (well, not the womb part), and hysterically funny and a great read.

The book offers us a narrator, B.K. Troop, who is both omniscient and blind, as well as an admitted plagiarist, and the story he tells (steals, borrows, and imagines) is a wild ride. Troop rents out rooms in his decrepit brownstone, "cheap rooms" to budding artists, with mentoring thrown in. All his tenants must meet qualifications of "charm, beauty, talent, and most important, cultural and religious similarity...only English speaking pagans" need apply. Too bad he doesn't demand the same of his lover: his gut would have been spared but as a delighted reader, it was just too fun to watch him squirm (and spy and steal and convince the authorities of his insanity: no trouble there). Watching all his crazy tenants (and their lovers, ex- and current, paid and unpaid, murderous and temperamental or stoic ad loyal) was just as fun and at times, even moving. Reading this book felt like New York City all over again, where to live is to think and to suffer and to have squalid good times.

This book had all the elements of a great book and I loved every bit: twisted and addicting plot, great characters involved in awesome struggles and failing or succeeding marvelously, plus tons of wit and intelligence to keep everything interesting.

In The House Beautiful B K Troop continues to exert his charms following his failed attempt at the seduction of Christopher (in Allison Burnett's previous novel Christopher: A Tale of Seduction). The ageing, wine guzzling, overweight queen who posses a cutting tongue and a biting wit learns that he is the sole beneficiary of his recently deceased friend and landlady Sasha Buchwitz, and so inherits the brownstone in which he resides. To make ends meet he takes in on a low rent young aspiring artists and writers. B K assumes the role of muse or mentor for his tenants, whether welcome or not, and strives by one means or another, fair or foul, to maintain an omniscient presence on the household. Newly arrived at The House Beautiful is the young, naive and appealing student Adrian, whom B K assumes to be a young poet; but all is not what it seems, and it is not until the conclusion do we discover the facts behind the subterfuge.
B K maintains the seemingly pompous exterior that hides a more tender heart that made him so interesting a character in Christopher. But now with the strange mix of misfits residing at The House Beautiful, Burnett has the perfect foil with which to demonstrate his ability at comic writing. The result is an hilarious tale, with some absolutely delightful passages such as the practice interviews B K pursues with the various tenants prior to his meeting with the State Dept and upon which his incapacity benefit hinges, and the engaging exchanges between B K and Adrian.
A rewarding read which becomes ever more captivating as it nears its moving finale.

As an often bored and disappointed fiction fan, Allison Burnett's book has given me back the thrill of reading. This is a delicious book, pithy, imaginative, smart and funny. A must-read if you love original language, original characters, originality itself.

Ignore the prosaic book jacket which belies the life and color of this remarkable novel. The House Beautiful is no maudlin meditation as said cover would suggest, but a glorious and guilty pleasure. The elegance of the writing seduces as does the repulsive B.K.Troop - an almost physical revulsion to Mr. Troop slowly melts into endearment. The rundown house, which is an extension of the rotten and decrepit B.K., breathes out the secrets of its sweetly lost inhabitants. It is indeed a strangely beautiful house. Burnett's story is told with such clarity that one can almost smell the world of B.K. and his odd menagerie. A witty and irresistible novel.

"The House Beautiful" is among the best comic novels I've read in years - a page-turner that manages to be laugh out loud funny while at the same time deeply emotionally affecting.

If you're a fan of Jonathan Ames, Tom Perrotta or classic John Irving, this is a must buy. You will not be disappointed...

Burnett has proven again that his character BK Troop is as important as "Confederacy of Dunces" Ignacius Reilly. The first BK book, "Christopher, A Tale of Seduction" was not a one-off anomaly; Allison Burnett has a winner here, too. Buy both books and read "Christopher" first.

I laughed out loud. I winced. I re-read. I laughed some more. Allison Burnett's memorable character, BK Troop, couldn't be a better combination of revolting and hilarious at the same time. This is one of those books that holds on to you long after you've finished reading it. The supporting players are finely drawn and brought to life with deftly combined craft and humor. As with so many great stories, I was sad when it ended and my time with these witty, crazy, miserable starving artists (or not) came to an end. This is the kind of book so many writers strive for and never achieve.