This month's selection is one of those books where the less you know going into it, the better. Reading the blurb might make you think we’ve sent you some kind of operatic fever dream meets zombie romance and put you off. So, we recommend a dive-right-in approach. Here are three things we will reveal before you do so:
1. This is Lorrie Moore’s first book in 14 years and its publication is a literary event. Alison Lurie said Moore was the “the nearest thing we have to Chekhov”, and Nick Hornby called her “the best American writer of her generation”. The point we’re making: she’s garnered some serious acclaim.
2. Moore was the subject of Laura’s honours thesis (all those years ago) and, were she forced to choose a favourite writer, the author would be one of the names blurted out in response (side note: never force a reader to choose favourites).
3. The book—a magic box novel about love, death, grief and longing, about how strange we can be, and how our emotions can sometimes reshape time and space—has been out for just over a week and has been described as “a triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination” by The Guardian, and Claire Messud thinks the “prose might be her finest”.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home will certainly be the most esoteric book we send you this year. We also hope that it’s the drollest, the funniest, the most surprising; the book most likely to be remembered by critics in a decade’s time, and the one that shows readers the previously unimagined limits writing can lead them to. If it’s your first month with us, fret not, we have a straight-up love story for you in August.
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