Book review: Lorrie Moore takes another sharp turn in corpse-toting road trip
I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home is set in America during the Trump election, a place of confusion and chaos where life, death, love – everything, in fact – is up for grabs
I’ve been nursing a quiet, unwavering love for Lorrie Moore since her 1986 novel-in-stories Anagrams. (Although, what with it being Lorrie Moore and all, Anagrams could also be described as stories-in-a-novel.) Its protagonist Benna Carpenter shape-shifts from chapter to chapter.
The book doesn’t just play with facts, but with the very concept of the self. Even identity itself, Moore appeared to be telling us, can be considered just another costume in life’s dressing-up box.
Regardless of circumstances or personalities, however, Moore’s characters always have her distinctive, pitch-perfect voice. Since the American’s first collection Self-Help was published in 1985, her writing has been lauded for its razor-sharp wit and wry, through-a-glass-darkly sensibility.
