I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

A Novel

By: Lorrie Moore

Narrated by: Sophie Amoss

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (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 Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, NPR, Vulture, Lit Hub

“Who else but Lorrie Moore could make, in razor-sharp irresistible prose, a ghost story about death buoyant with life?”—PEOPLE

“Is it an allegory? Is it real? It doesn’t matter...[It’s] a novel with big questions, no answers, and it’s absolutely brilliant.”—Lit Hub

“[A] triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination.”—The Guardian

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

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.

©2023 Lorrie Moore (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Moore . . . is an indisputable genius, her sentences routinely sublime . . . [A] triumph.”—Sally Franson, San Francisco Chronicle

“[Moore] once again wields her wordplay playfully and powerfully, striking a balance between levity and gravity. Such a pliant voice is needed to undertake an exploration of the thin veil between life and death, and between tragedy and comedy, and Moore once again succeeds admirably. . . . [I]t’s hard to find writers ancient or modern who have used language with a music, wit and tenderness comparable to Moore’s.”–Margaret Mitchell, The Spectator

“Who else but Lorrie Moore could make, in razor-sharp, irresistible prose, a ghost story about death buoyant with life?”—People

Fun, imaginative, playful and deeply philosophical

Surprised and delighted to ponder the issues surrounding life, relationships and death in such a playful story.

Not for me

Stuck it out to the end but I’m not sure why. It had nice moments but really didn’t add up, not for me anyway. The long car trip with the dead woman felt dull, not romantic or exciting or especially interesting. Of course, your taste may differ…

My First Lorrie Moore

Wow! Just incredible! Lily and Finn are a great modern couple even if one is dead! The lodger and a no put up with BS landlord. Letters to my sister are so well written, witty and dark, I want more!

not loving this reader

i want to like the book, but i’m not impressed with the voice artist at all. ugh.

Espectacular

Su escritura es una delicia, cada página tiene algo para subrayar o buscar.
LM da lugar al lector a jugar y fantasear y al mismo tiempo tos música está presente en todo el libro.
Recordé grandes musical halls, óperas, English poetry authors.
Shakespear and Faulkner every where.
Describe con detalle los momentos que atravesamos cuando muere persona que amamos y con sutileza y afecto los cadaveres de aquellos.
Una pequeña joya Proustiana.

Very Loorie Moore... and yet very not

The voice is back, but back with more surrealism than I ever knew to hope for from Loorie Moore. Her deep dive into death is buoyed by her distinct brand of humor, odd beauty, and comforting intellect. It is odd how closely two of our greatest fiction writers, Saunders and Moore, came together with the subject matter or their last two novels. What a strange and delightful pairing they've made together. I never expected Lincoln literature to be such a balm to our time. Again, this book is both familiar and surprising.

I am not sure what I appreciate more about Moore. Her writing, or her influence on all the writers I adore. We owe her for both. I feel like this book will give permission to many writers to harder, go weirder, go....sadder.

Phenomenal

“Jokes are flotation devices on the great sea of sorrowful life. They are the exit signs in a very dark room.” I feel bad for folks who didn't see this book through. It does start out a bit bleak and seemingly obtuse, but over time it reveals and delivers so much strange richness.

I went into this audiobook having read no reviews or synopses up front, just a vague understanding that it would be about grief and ghosts (sort of), but through a Lorrie Moore lens. I didn't expect it to be quite so absurdly funny, too.

I loved that it surprised me, over and over again, and it had so many phenomenally descriptive lines that I will now have to get the physical book so that I can savor these with my eyes, too. Sophie Amoss' narration was impeccable, and brought Moore's words to life vividly: dry, terse and mysterious where it needed to be, ironic, amusing and full of personality where it needed to be.

The story does have a substantial road trip component: I listened to it during a series of late night drives, which I think enhanced the experience further. I can heartily recommend listening to it on a long, dark drive if you have the chance.

Lovely and clever. Great narration.

Really great prose that halfway made me wish I’d read in paperback so I could make highlights and notes in the margins. One of those novels that feels like LITERATURE. The story did frustrate me in places with elements that were introduced but then never explored, but that feels like nitpicking given the strength of the overall narrative and the high quality performance of the narrator.

Beautiful

I will always remember when one of the Pope boys of Kansas City handed me Like Life, hooked me in to Lorrie Moore and changed everything. Listened to this straight through in an NYC hotel room this evening. So great to visit these dimensions. Can’t wait to read with
my own eyes and listen again, Ms. Moore will always be my favorite modern author.

Way to much flowy words. Not enough story.

The author seemed to be trying to impress us with a bunch of flowy words that made no sense. Story was intriguing but that was a big annoying distraction that I couldn’t wait to end.