There is a bookstore in a part of Minneapolis, W 25th St about a mile or two west of Hennepin more exactly, which is in a location I love. This is a pleasant upper middle class area which could well be called suburbia if it were not in a leading American city. The store is called “Birchbark Books and Native Arts” and is owned by the author , Louise Erdich.

It is across from a school and near a park and there is a pleasant restaurant-lounge next door with, I seem to remember, decent food at moderate prices. It’s an all-out great place to be where if you are retired or on vacation you could, on a good weather day, sit outside and read while drinking endless cups of coffee or tea and no one would bother you all day. You could drop in to the restaurant for lunch, then return to you outdoor spot. Your companion could join you later for dinner at the restaurant. In case I’m not making myself clear this is a great place.

Erdich is considered by many a significant American writer who has published many books, mostly novels, about the upper mid west and her people–which is complicated because she is half Chippewa and half German. She obviously knows both of these groups very well, though her writing tends to emphasize the Native American side.

The store has been there for several years and on our fairly frequent(limited in recent years by covid)trips to the Twin Cities area we nearly always visit. The store has gotten a little wokey for my taste which means not that I object to the store but I don’t find too much I want to read there. But on our recent visit last month I made a find. I found an author that I will likely try again, though she is not exactly my kind of writer. (The same could be said of Erdich, whose latest book is apparently a novel about a haunting in a Minneapolis bookstore–gotta try that one, right?)

OK, enough background. Lorrie Moore is an established American writer–among the literati, anyway. I didn’t know her until her newest, “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home” practically jumped off the shelf at Louise’s book store a few weeks ago. Had it not been for the store I would likely never have heard of her. Thank you, Louise.(By the way, I had a similar experience at the Cleveland Art Museum last spring–in this case I was captivated by a postcard of Amedeo Modigliani’s “Woman With Red Hair,” a stunning portrait of a woman in a dark dress with ,uh, well, red hair. I am usually much more interested in writing, in literature, drama, and other forms of the written word than in painting, but this one overwhelmed me, Go figure).

Moore has done more short stories than anything else, though this is not her first novel. It is, however, my first exposure to her and it was one of the weirder introductions to a writer(or anyone else)I’ve ever had. She seems to have a devoted following who express themselves about her on-line and they often speak of her talent with words.

They are right. She is one of the most gifted wordsmiths I have ever read. Consider–“Desire, of course, on my part, has been shooed away by the Lord. Though sometimes I think I see it, raggedy, outback among the mossy pavers, like a child cutting across yards to get to school. One sees a darting through the gum trees and hickories that have come back from the winter’s scorching freeze. Oh, yes, I say to the darting thing, the fluff of a dandelion clock, or a milkwood puff: I sort of remember you.”(p 6) Who else could write like that?

And that is her strength. She gives life to words and phrases and turns them into living things, sometimes beautiful, sometimes funny, very frequently fascinating. And this is one reason she kept me reading her though I think many might find the story unsettling and I did at times. Actually there are two stories going on here, one comprising I’d say less than 20% of the book, the other one the other more than 80%. It is this story that get most of the attention as indeed it should as it constitutes so much of the book.

But the first one should not be ignored or belittled. The above quotation which so impressed me is from it and the book begins and ends(almost) with it. This story is the diary of a southern lady of sometime in the post-Civil War era. Her name is Elizabeth and she is single and runs a boarding house in a small, unnamed town. The story is her diary in which she writes her deceased sister to tell her about her life now and her experiences and opinions.

Among her boarders is a man of indeterminate(as nearly as I could tell)years and a distinguished attitude. He makes subtle remarks and uses extravagantly eloquent language. She refers to him as the “handsome lodger” the first time we note her writing something about him to her sister. She slowly reveals that he has hinted to her that he would be willing to remove her spinsterhood, something which she obviously both desires and detests.

This not only contains some of the book’s most elegant writing(note above), it is the more “normal” of the two stories, though a lot of people, had they read only this part of the book would likely find that a strange remark.

The other part of the book, the main story, seems to take place in pre-Trump(but barely)America. Our main character is a young or maybe youngish middle aged man named Finn. Finn is a high school teacher on leave due to his health and is visiting his brother Max in a hospice in the Bronx. The visitation scenes are disturbing and sometimes hard to take. But Moore is not one to go lightly on her reader, at least not at certain times. These parts of the book are often painful, but they gave insight to Finn’s character. I would say that, overall, he is both a hero and a victim.

While visiting Max Finn receives word that back in Illinois his ex-girl friend Lily is in trouble, depressed and suicidal. Though they have been broken up for about a year, Finn feels he must go to her so he makes his excuses to Max and starts west toward Lily and Illinois. At one point Moore gives us the following–“He suspected he was in Ohio. When not paying attention in life he assumed he could end up in Ohio.” Hmm..

Eventually he reaches his destination and meets Sigrid, Lily’s sister, who tells him he is too late. Lily has committed suicide. Devastated, Finn goes to the place of her grave. And there an odd thing happens. He meets Lily. She comes from behind him and speaks. He turns and there she is–it’s Lily all right, but apparently half dead and half living.l She is wearing a shroud and apparently has a mouthful of dirt, but she is there and conscious and talking. “Crazed death had not yet made a stranger of her.” (p 78)

Thus begins one of the weirder literary tales which I have read or heard about. It becomes a sort of road trip regarding human mortality as the living Finn and and whatever Lily cross a couple of states on their way to a Knoxville(area?) farm which harvests various parts of recently deceased and uses them for research to extend and improve human life. Lily has promised them her organs and has no intention of going back on the promise.

As they travel they talk and talk and talk. They speculate and they reminisce and they wonder. Lily never has an explanation for what is going on. Is she a zombie? What is she? We never know and neither does Finn, nor, apparently, Lily herself.

They reflect on the relationship they once shared and they reflect upon the ironies and shortcomings of the world and human existence. They talk about the important and the non-important, the profound and the ordinary. They talk about each other. The make love(mercifully not described in detail)and they move on. And they make no real discoveries, though they mull over a lot of long-known truths about themselves. But they never reach conclusions that satisfy them and the hope that Finn seems to have of understanding is disappointed.

Elizabeth gets one more shot near the end and in a very round-the-corner way it is revealed as a possibility that that “gentleman lodger” is John Wilkes Booth, apparently escaped and now travelling on his own using another name but telling half-truths about his own past, And there is a dramatic and surprising end to their relationship and Elizabeth is left guilty and unanswered too.

Finn gets one more round and we pull hard for him(or I did, naively, perhaps) but he is too devastated. His brother is now gone too and he has to get himself together for the ceremonies and other business of his passing. And Finn is now stuck in the world with no one and no answers. This is not quite a full or fair description of the ending, but I think it would be fair to say that this novel has no “ending” in the usual sense of the term. Finn and his despair dominate more or less throughout the book. The connection to Elizabeth’s story is extremely tenuous and perhaps meaningless. Or so it appears to me. That may not have been Ms Moore’s intent But it serves well enough given the “story.”

I am a loss to try to sum up this book. I can’t think of any adequate way to do it. I have made it sound like the ultimate “downer” and that was not exactly my intent. There are times when things are actually done or said with humor and such humor usually works for awhile. Moore can be fairly funny. She certainly dazzled me with the beauty and complexity of her language. It seems to me that she wrote as a poet as well as a novelist. She is not a “storyteller” in the usual sense of the term but she has presented a story of stark and devastating beauty and complexity all the same. If you have a place similar to the one I mentioned in Minneapolis, that, on the right day and at the right time, would be a good location for reading this. The book and the atmosphere will both compare to each other and offset each other, I should think. Ms Moore will obviously not be everyone’s cup of tea, but her questioning mind and her determination in seeking out the truth about human beings and everything about them–love, God, disappointment, death, trust and all the other big questions could keep some of us coming back. I, for example, think I’ll try some history or a mystery/suspense novel now. But I do have an older novel by her that I found at my local library in my “to read” area. So maybe I’ll be back among her readers again. I certainly plan to stay in her corner, wherever that may be.