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on March 15, 2017
Here’s the thing: I read books because I hear about them on Twitter, or at literary websites, or from authors I’m reading talking about writers they’ve loved; all of which is to say I don’t have a curated reading list so much as I have that feeling of a game show I watched as a child where someone was let loose in a store with a shopping cart for sixty-seconds and whatever they could pile into the cart and get across the finish line was theirs to keep. That’s me as a reader. Wildly flailing and staggering and tumbling and racing through life, grabbing at this book and then that and oh holy crap that one looks delicious too and then I must have everything she’s ever written and wait that one from the nineteenth century which inspired this one from the twenty-first looks so shiny and — you get the picture.
So, I don’t know who (or where or what) recommended Infinite Home to me, but this was the third novel I read in a few short days which was about forming (or, falling into) one’s own chosen families, and it was the second which featured someone who cut themselves. Too, Perfect Little World had been about a community called The Infinite Family Project, and then, this, titled Infinite Home. As I was reading through these three novels, the similarities and the synchronicities were as compelling to me as the books themselves. Was it coincidence? Or, am I somehow magnetized to stories about outcasts building worlds made of love found from other lost, wandering folk? Like the worlds I built in my theatre and teaching days? Like the world I inhabit now on Twitter? Who knows.
Really, I’m asking — do any of you know?
After reading Kathleen Alcott’s beautiful Infinite Home, I imagine she would know. I fell in love with her on page 18, a love that deepened as I devoured this novel in one day. Listen to this and you, too, will be in love and going immediately to get your hands on this book. It is a paragraph about Thomas, a once respected artist who has been felled by a stroke, losing use of his left side and his creativity. He is describing Edith, the owner/landlady of the apartment house he and a collection of the lost, lonely, and damaged inhabit. Here it is:
He made a mental list of the things he liked about Edith; it made him happy to put names to them. He enjoyed the way Edith disliked openly. She didn’t feel the need to offer complex criticisms or to imply that her preference came from superiority. Tomatoes? “Hate ’em!” she’d said. Also: sweaters that pilled, the man at the corner store who always said, “You look tired,” the smell of unwashed art students in the summer. She threw those off her back with efficiency and purpose, as though beating standing water from an awning, and it made Thomas feel more at home with his own distastes. But he adored Edith for plenty of other reasons: She understood slowness. She knew how to wait for the kettle to warm, how to move across a room and appreciate each photograph and plant within it. She was careful about laughter, went to it only when it truly called her. The anecdotes she offered were always well-formed, compact things he felt he could keep and carry with him. “Edith,” Thomas had said on several occasions, in moments drunk on self-pity. “Sometimes I just don’t know! What recommends the rest of my life?” She was the only one he exclaimed around. When he said such things, she made a crumpled face, waved her hand through the air to banish his wallowing as it bounced off the high ceilings. “Dear heart,” she said. “Of course you don’t know. How could you? But have you ever been astounded by what you knew was coming?”
That is some glorious, insightful, lyrical prose. I was hooked. I love that it is all one paragraph, rather than being broken into bites. The author connected her development of Thomas’s perception of Edith, his trust in the way she sees him, and what the details he notices and things he knows say about both of them.
There are quite a few characters in this novel, each of them vibrant, grounded in truth and reality, and given their due, made visceral for us. Also, like there was in Perfect Little World, there is a villainous, avaricious child who wants to undo the good done by a parent. Both of those malefactors I saw as symbolic of the hellhounds now taking charge of this country, determined to undo the loving goodness and kindness we’ve spent generations achieving, slow step by slow step to equality.
Happily, both Perfect Little World and Infinite Home resolved in comforting ways. This was my favorite of the three family-making novels I read, and had Kathleen Alcott ended it any other way, I think I would have liked it not even a little. The outcome encouraged me in my resolve to see things in a more hopeful way. Which was a good thing, because the next book I read challenged my ability to maintain my newfound optimism.
So, I don’t know who (or where or what) recommended Infinite Home to me, but this was the third novel I read in a few short days which was about forming (or, falling into) one’s own chosen families, and it was the second which featured someone who cut themselves. Too, Perfect Little World had been about a community called The Infinite Family Project, and then, this, titled Infinite Home. As I was reading through these three novels, the similarities and the synchronicities were as compelling to me as the books themselves. Was it coincidence? Or, am I somehow magnetized to stories about outcasts building worlds made of love found from other lost, wandering folk? Like the worlds I built in my theatre and teaching days? Like the world I inhabit now on Twitter? Who knows.
Really, I’m asking — do any of you know?
After reading Kathleen Alcott’s beautiful Infinite Home, I imagine she would know. I fell in love with her on page 18, a love that deepened as I devoured this novel in one day. Listen to this and you, too, will be in love and going immediately to get your hands on this book. It is a paragraph about Thomas, a once respected artist who has been felled by a stroke, losing use of his left side and his creativity. He is describing Edith, the owner/landlady of the apartment house he and a collection of the lost, lonely, and damaged inhabit. Here it is:
He made a mental list of the things he liked about Edith; it made him happy to put names to them. He enjoyed the way Edith disliked openly. She didn’t feel the need to offer complex criticisms or to imply that her preference came from superiority. Tomatoes? “Hate ’em!” she’d said. Also: sweaters that pilled, the man at the corner store who always said, “You look tired,” the smell of unwashed art students in the summer. She threw those off her back with efficiency and purpose, as though beating standing water from an awning, and it made Thomas feel more at home with his own distastes. But he adored Edith for plenty of other reasons: She understood slowness. She knew how to wait for the kettle to warm, how to move across a room and appreciate each photograph and plant within it. She was careful about laughter, went to it only when it truly called her. The anecdotes she offered were always well-formed, compact things he felt he could keep and carry with him. “Edith,” Thomas had said on several occasions, in moments drunk on self-pity. “Sometimes I just don’t know! What recommends the rest of my life?” She was the only one he exclaimed around. When he said such things, she made a crumpled face, waved her hand through the air to banish his wallowing as it bounced off the high ceilings. “Dear heart,” she said. “Of course you don’t know. How could you? But have you ever been astounded by what you knew was coming?”
That is some glorious, insightful, lyrical prose. I was hooked. I love that it is all one paragraph, rather than being broken into bites. The author connected her development of Thomas’s perception of Edith, his trust in the way she sees him, and what the details he notices and things he knows say about both of them.
There are quite a few characters in this novel, each of them vibrant, grounded in truth and reality, and given their due, made visceral for us. Also, like there was in Perfect Little World, there is a villainous, avaricious child who wants to undo the good done by a parent. Both of those malefactors I saw as symbolic of the hellhounds now taking charge of this country, determined to undo the loving goodness and kindness we’ve spent generations achieving, slow step by slow step to equality.
Happily, both Perfect Little World and Infinite Home resolved in comforting ways. This was my favorite of the three family-making novels I read, and had Kathleen Alcott ended it any other way, I think I would have liked it not even a little. The outcome encouraged me in my resolve to see things in a more hopeful way. Which was a good thing, because the next book I read challenged my ability to maintain my newfound optimism.
on January 18, 2017
My troublemaker brother got hold of my Kindle so I did not read it at all.
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICEon November 25, 2016
Once, when I was getting ready for a move, a friend said, “Remember, home is nothing more than a piece of real estate.” But I knew then – and I know now – that it is really much more. Home is the place where you are your most authentic self, a place of sanctuary and acceptance.
Kathleen Alcott wisely understands that. In a run-down Brooklyn brownstone, overseen by an octogenarian named Edith who is beginning to lose her mind, a ragtag small group of men and women feel anxious for their future. All are damaged, physically or emotionally: Thomas, a once-time well-known painter who is now partially paralyzed by a stroke, Paulie, a child-man who suffers from Williams Syndrome and his tightly-coiled and doting sister Claudia, Adeleine who is an agoraphobe and hoarder, and Edward, a comedian who hides his fears with caustic humor. Together, they recreate the definition of family and learn to trust and love each other.
This author’s prose is gorgeous – sometimes, breathtakingly so, and her insights are similarly beautiful. One description of Edith: “She was upset because she said (her memories) were sort of losing their foundation, like they were flooded and pushed into the wrong rooms.” There is the fear of “playing nonsensical checkers with incontinent zombies.” Or, in this description of fireflies: “They had seen only little flashes like the beginnings of lonely ideas but not the crowd of busy angels he had come for.” After a little while, I began noting that every single chapter could actually stand by itself as a short story, although this is definitely a novel with a forward propulsion. Each of thse chapters shimmers like gems.
And oh, the themes: what is home? (One character answers, “No need to bring home with me, dear. I know what it feels like.”) What happens when we are forced out of our own poor facsimile of a self-created Garden of Eden into the world to seek answers? Can we recreate ourselves to give ourselves a second chance – through trust of others, the open road, cults, or the great outdoors?
The answers are nuanced: some of these characters can, some can’t. I would give this novel unqualified 5 stars (I'm still 5-starring it) were it not for one particularly one-dimensional character. Owen, Edith’s son, is the embodiment of menacing evil, and the reasons for his malaise are way too pat. Also, Claudia’s devotion to her brother Paulie sometimes seems idealized and cloying. Still, with those exceptions, this is a fine book with mesmerizing prose that fully addresses how and why a life is worth living.
Kathleen Alcott wisely understands that. In a run-down Brooklyn brownstone, overseen by an octogenarian named Edith who is beginning to lose her mind, a ragtag small group of men and women feel anxious for their future. All are damaged, physically or emotionally: Thomas, a once-time well-known painter who is now partially paralyzed by a stroke, Paulie, a child-man who suffers from Williams Syndrome and his tightly-coiled and doting sister Claudia, Adeleine who is an agoraphobe and hoarder, and Edward, a comedian who hides his fears with caustic humor. Together, they recreate the definition of family and learn to trust and love each other.
This author’s prose is gorgeous – sometimes, breathtakingly so, and her insights are similarly beautiful. One description of Edith: “She was upset because she said (her memories) were sort of losing their foundation, like they were flooded and pushed into the wrong rooms.” There is the fear of “playing nonsensical checkers with incontinent zombies.” Or, in this description of fireflies: “They had seen only little flashes like the beginnings of lonely ideas but not the crowd of busy angels he had come for.” After a little while, I began noting that every single chapter could actually stand by itself as a short story, although this is definitely a novel with a forward propulsion. Each of thse chapters shimmers like gems.
And oh, the themes: what is home? (One character answers, “No need to bring home with me, dear. I know what it feels like.”) What happens when we are forced out of our own poor facsimile of a self-created Garden of Eden into the world to seek answers? Can we recreate ourselves to give ourselves a second chance – through trust of others, the open road, cults, or the great outdoors?
The answers are nuanced: some of these characters can, some can’t. I would give this novel unqualified 5 stars (I'm still 5-starring it) were it not for one particularly one-dimensional character. Owen, Edith’s son, is the embodiment of menacing evil, and the reasons for his malaise are way too pat. Also, Claudia’s devotion to her brother Paulie sometimes seems idealized and cloying. Still, with those exceptions, this is a fine book with mesmerizing prose that fully addresses how and why a life is worth living.
on November 14, 2016
Not my favorite but ok.
on November 13, 2016
Five stars! Very enjoyabel book. Heart warming, unusual characters.
on November 10, 2016
Beautifully written.
on November 2, 2016
So well written. The characters were well developed. Felt like I didn't want to stop reading the book. Also felt as though I knew the characters.
on November 1, 2016
The dress fits just right. The fabric is a little thinner than I expected but I'm ok with the look.
on September 19, 2016
Well written meaningful dialog for the less chatty members of society.
Must follow character introductions as they are intrduced. Everyone has value to the story.
Must follow character introductions as they are intrduced. Everyone has value to the story.
