I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

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“Fifty years from now, it may well turn out that the work of very few American writers has as much to say about what it means to be alive in our time as that of Lorrie Moore.” —Harper’s Magazine

Lorrie Moore’s first novel since A Gate at the Stairs—a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heart

From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (Caryn James; The New York Times)—a ghost story set in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, an elegiac consideration of grief, devotion (filial and romantic), and the vanishing and persistence of all things—seen and unseen. 

A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all . . .

With her distinctive, irresistible wordplay and singular wry humor and wisdom, Lorrie Moore has given us a magic box of longing and surprise as she writes about love and rebirth and the pull towards life.  Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told which may or may not be true. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home takes us through a trap door, into a windswept, imagined journey to the tragic-comic landscape that is, unmistakably, the world of Lorrie Moore.Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker

“[Lorrie Moore] hasn’t lost her absurdist touch or her ability to balance all manner of disparate elements. . . . The novel centers on a suspended high school history teacher visiting his dying brother, and explores various kinds of love and duty.” —The New York Times

“[Moore] assembles her puns and her false mustaches, readies her troupe, and finds a way to rewrite the most inexorably linear story of all. Moore’s ‘radiant turbulence’ will always beckon. You have to stick around for the show.” —The New Yorker

“Charming and sly . . . Fluky, fitfully funny and folk-horror-adjacent . . . It’s a book about loss, and about the patience and endurance it takes to treat the dying with respect, and about the shaggy and multiform varieties of love.” —The New York Times

“Moore is revered for her wit, and fans will not be disappointed by the novel’s dark humor. The prose might be her finest.” —Harper’s Magazine

“Moore is after something more mysterious than naturalism. She is operating in the territory of myth. Moore’s fever dream of a world [feels] so relentlessly real.” —L.A. Times

“A slender novel from one of our greatest writers is a reminder to prize every moment we get with her on the page. . . . The whimsical aspects of Moore’s humour come to the fore  . . . full of musical phrasing and keen insight revealed in unexpected images. . . . Her style is still hers alone.” —Financial Times

“Incisive, inventive fiction . . . about what’s left of our planet and our history and our collective plans for a future. In other words, vintage Moore.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“[A] triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination.” —The Guardian

“[A] wild, haunted-house ride, powered by linguistic panache, descriptive oomph and her trademark wit. Captivating insights into love, loss and letting go add an elegiac note.” —Daily Mail
 
“This is a novel about inexorable loss, about how we can’t hold on to anything no matter how hard we try. What a peculiar gift of a novel. This slender ghost story haunts long past the time when the final page is turned.” —The Sunday Times

“The writing is just spectacular. And I think Lorrie Moore really is a magician.” —Front Row, BBC Radio

“Her style is still hers alone . . . this new novel is a reminder to prize every moment we get with her on the page.” —Independent

“Welcome to the strangest novel of the year . . . [Lorrie Moore] confirms her place as one of America’s most surreal, witty writers.” —The Telegraph

“Deeply empathetic . . .  Moore’s latest novel is elegiac and funny, consumed with both the process of dying and the act of remembering.” —Star Tribune

“By the end of this wise, tender novel, we can only conclude that everything is pretty damn wonderful, too.” —Marie Claire

“Moore’s trademark precision prose works throughout to move the story forward and ensure the reader is both laughing and crying.” —The Brooklyn Rail

“[Moore] manages the impossible in her writing: every other sentence is a gut-punch or the funniest line you’ve ever read, and it coheres into some of the truest writing about life—for what is life if not constantly either hilarious or devastating, and often both? I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a ghost story, a love story, a family elegy, and a search for answers both tangible and ephemeral: it’s the world of Lorrie Moore, beckoning us back in.” —Literary Hub

“Thoughtful and witty. . . . Moore strikes gold when her characters drop the act and express their feelings, building to a beautiful meditation on the difficulty of letting go, as well as the ways in which a person lives on through the memories of others. The author’s fans will love it, and those new to Moore will want see what else they’ve been missing.” —Publishers Weekly

“Moore’s sterling literary reputation is anchored most firmly to her short stories, but in her long-awaited fourth novel, her prose is just as breathtakingly crystalline, her humor wily and piquant. . . . Moore’s unnerving, gothic, acutely funny, lyrically metaphysical, and bittersweet tale is an audacious, mind-bending plunge into the mysteries of illness, aberration, death, grief, memory, and love.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Humorous, surprising, and deeply moving.” —Tricycle
 
“Is it an allegory? Is it real? It doesn’t matter. Exploring sibling love, death, and longing, it’s a novel with big questions, no answers, and it’s absolutely brilliant.” —Literary Hub

“There is much enjoyment to be had with Moore’s unique style, particularly the extended, loopy dialogue, replete with wordplay, song lyrics, conspiracy theories, literary and pop culture references. By its end, [the novel] becomes a moving tale of longing, grief, and acceptance.” —Library Journal

“A startlingly brilliant, strange and surprising book.” —Max Porter, The Irish IndependentLORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.US

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