Customer Reviews

House: A Memoir

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Ruhlman's latest book focuses on his family's renovation of a hundred year old Victorian home in the Cleveland Heights section Cleveland. Ruhlman manages to weave a history of suburbia, and America's tense relationship with its very idea, with a personal remembrance of renovating something from the studs. His discussion of the history of the Cleveland Heights section as well as his own home's owners helps to bring the area to life; I found it to be an interesting look at a city that is struggling to regain some of it's urban power. The changing nature of suburbia is the backbone for much of what he writes - how America, an ever moving nation, has changed it's view on not only suburbs but also on the very notion of home and family. He also discusses the problems this presents for him, questioning why he and his wife are choosing to subject themselves to living in the attic of their new home while contractors built what must be one of the most beautiful kitchens in the world! Ruhlman does not shy away from the tensions that are laying under the surface of his life. And even if he does not flesh them out fully or always understand his desire for this massive Victorian structure, he is honest in his confusion.
In a few instances Ruhlman can get a bit preachy about what it means to have a home. In some ways he invest too much in the actual physical property rather than what makes his house a home: his family, his wife, his neighbors, even his cooking. That would be the only slight drawback to an otherwise excellent read, one that has you thinking about the nature of urban development as well as laughing about the ups and downs of major renovations.

This book interested me as a native Clevelander and a former resident of Cleveland Heights. It also happened that I had recently sold an old house (in Atlanta) and had happily cast off the annoyances of homeownership.

For Ruhlman, the old house that he & his wife buy becomes imbued with many meanings of home. Ruhlman grew-up in the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights and the house becomes a meditation on growing up in suburban Cleveland and being able to recapture some of that life as an adult and for his children. Cleveland Heights once rivaled Shaker Heights for prestige, but was never as carefully as planned a city and always had a socially and economically more diverse population. Shaker Heights is a beautiful suburb, but Cleveland Heights is somehow more comfortable and real. Much of Cleveland Heights predated zoning laws (which became established in law because of a court case in the nearby suburb of Euclid, Ohio), yet the basic layout of things has endured and has proven to be just as livable today as it was decades ago. Partly for privacy reasons, Ruhlman doesn't give too much detail about his immediate neighborhood, but in doing so, he fails to give Clevelanders and non-Clevelanders a real sense of place and context. Cleveland Heights is filled with leafy streets and an ecelctric mix of "traditional" architectural styles, with the odd modern, sometimes architecturally significant, interloper. The broad boulevards include tudors, french provincials and federal style homes. The side streets include various kinds of "colonials" including "dutch colonials", bungalows, "California" contemporaries and small scale tudors. Near the commercial strips, one finds the frame 2 and a half family wood framed "Buckeye front" houses that are unique to Cleveland. I have coveted many a Cleveland Heights street and home.

The book moves back and forth between a number of narratives. It begins with the straightforward acquisition of the house. At points, it digresses into Ruhlman's past and that of his wife, whose reluctant transplantation to Cleveland is a recurring theme, and their marriage. There's a long digression into scholarly work about suburbs that's overwritten, needlessly academic, and just doesn't work. Ruhlman tries to defend suburbia, but isn't very convincing. Shaker Heights & Cleveland Heights were streetcar suburbs and Shaker still has the streetcars. They have the density and layouts to permit neighborhood business districts and neighborhood life to exists in ways that are more "urban" than suburban and certainly different from much of post WWII suburbia. Cleveland Heights is the kind of place where "suburbia haters" wind up buying a house.

Some of the best parts of the book deal with buying the house and restoring it. I found myself jealous of his home inspector, a man who found the kinds of very expensive plumbing and drainage problems that my inspector missed. Instead, I would up redoing an already remodled bathroom and spending thousands on french drains. The book become somewhat jarring because we don't get more of the evolution of the house from "wreck with good bones" to home. OTOH, one of the most interesting seques is the reconstruction of the house's history. This leads Ruhlman to contact former occupants, who put him in touch with other people who spent time as visitors or residents of the house. One former resident even returns for a visit.

Ruhlman ultimately ties up most of the loose ends, although we aren't privy to how things came together, in his marriage, or in the restoration of the house. In stories like this, one expects to read of ill-timed cost overruns, periods of primitive existence, and follies in home imporvement. Instead, we get a little mortaring, some painting, and a steady stream of rich people's castoffs from Ruhlman's mother in Florida.

Still, the book reminded me how a house becomes caught up in many other things in one's life, and most of the time, that's a good thing or at least a useful thing. For some people I know in Atlanta, the house is their excuse for staying there--almost like a bad marriage. For Ruhlman, the house was a way to keep the marriage together, although his wife didn't always see it that way. The book would have been better if we hadn't been lectured about urban planning and if we could have seen how the house's history, it's restoration, and Ruhlman's marraige get pulled together.

My husband is a native Clevelander, and we met in the city before moving to Florida shortly after our marriage. We were there 2 years when I read a review on this book, and it was one of the catalysts in bringing us back to Cleveland, snow and all. Michael Ruhlman is a gifted writer, and this is clearly his love letter to his home and neighborhood. I loved it, although I'm not sure if it will be as well-received by people who do not know and love Cleveland Heights the way I do! Fascinating.

As a native Clevelander, this book about an old house right around the corner from where I went to college really hit home (no pun intended). I enjoyed reading about the history of Cleveland and the venerable neighborhood where the Ruhlman family live, and sympathized with them as they undertook a massive home remodeling. A good mix of history, house and family issues. Definitely would recommend this one, along with the author's other books.

The movie, 'House' in which Kevin Kline starred was not based on this memoir. His house was built in a tree. Here, the Ruhlmans give a detailed account of their acquisition of a 100-yr-old place in Cleveland and how their lives were changed drastically. It is in a neighborhood meant for the city's elite, an aristocratic Anglo Village, but that was long ago. Sounds like the Fort Sanders area here.

Chuck played 'This Old House' recorded by Rosemary Clooney about a worn out, tuckered out place and no one who has the time to fix the shingles. The house on the cover of this book has shingles. Unless there is a resident ghost, no old house is as good as a brand-new one. Years ago, I tried to save Tennessee Hall in Pulaski, and my group of old-lady residents of the town were treated to a meal in the college president's exclusive dining room of the cafeteria. The dean, a Methodist minister, told me, "You can't go home again" -- everything changes. I was going to prove him wrong by returning to my hometown 'to die' but I soon learned that he was right. There is no going back.

The cost is too prohibitive to rehabilitate old, worn out houses and ancient downtown buildings. The plumbing and wiring are antiquated, meant for a different era. In Pulaski, a gazebo was built out of three tall antebellum columns (the 4th crumbled during demolition), all that is left of our historic Tennessee Hall. It was my first residence as a college girl and later as wife of a teacher with two small sons when it was used as a boys dorm. One student always whistled the song, 'Mrs. Robinson,' when he saw me.

Houses are like people, some age gracefully but others die in accidents (fire); a few have a variety of lives when a gullible rich family gets duped into renovation. For some, owning a house means they have made it -- achieved what their parents did, but at what a price? Others move constantly. My dad was one of the movers and shakers, until his old age. These past 25 years, so have I been unable to find a 'home' -- so I guess the lure of the open road can be an inherited instinct, like hyperthyroidism as a medical problem or osteoporosis handed down from grandmothers.

Houses give a sense of permanence which is an illusion. On a local talk show, a volatile caller upset some folks by proclaiming that only land owners should be allowed to vote. A house gives false protection from harm, but a castle had a moat to keep out intruders; burglars lurk right around the corner. And you can't control who your neighbors are or how they conduct their personal lives or the company they entertain in their own homes.

Lincoln said that we are all created equal, but the poor suffer the indignities because of their social status or lack thereof, and the rich are selfish individuals and not all are happy. A house does not make a home. It is the people who live there and love there (sometimes born there) who make the place a home. It is not rich furnishings or expensive ornaments. It is contentment and being relaxed and eager to 'come home.'

All the Ruhlmans wanted was to possess a place of their own to call 'home' no matter the price, financially or emotionally. He has written other books, about cooking, and numerous articles for 'Gourment' and 'Food Arts.' He must be a master chef.