Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own

Book Overview

In Home , eighteen of our finest writers evoke different rooms--from their pasts, their present, or simply their imaginations--in order to investigate the ways in which homes contain our lives. The results are touching, provocative, and sometimes hilarious. And since a portion of the editors' proceeds will go to organizations that help the homeless, Home is really where the heart is. Contributors include- Lynda Barry, Richard Bausch, Tony Earley, James Finn Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Allan Gurganus, Colin Harrison, Kathryn Harrison, Gish Jen, Karen Karbo, Alex Kotlowitz, Clint McCown, Susan Power, Esmeralda Santiago, Mona Simpson, Jane Smiley, Sallie Tisdale, and Bailey White. "Unforgettable...These pages are filled with the kind of details that etch a childhood place into the deep recesses of memory, that distinguish the sensual life of one family from another."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679768858
• ISBN13: 9780679768852
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

An invitation into the private homes of 20 writers.

A unique collection of authors on a challenging assigment to take the four inanimate walls of a room within a house and infuse it with life. To reach this goal, each author has sacrificed a tiny intimate piece of themselves to create within the reader a binding intimacy which is permanent and unshakeable. You will come away from this book feeling as if you just joined a private club with 20 new friends and feeling as if the initiation rite is to create a room of your own.It was fun to read this book because I found myself comparing essays, rating the authors on various points (such as how often they used the name of the room in the text) and searching for the various relationships. It was also very interesting to note the subconscious bonding rituals that occurred in every essay, without exception.In criticism, several of the essays are severely lacking in relevance to the room by which the article is titled. The authors of these, although obviously talented, strayed too far from the perceived assignment. This was an irritating fault because I felt as if I, as the reader, had more invested in the book than the author did, having spent so little effort in applying themselves to the work. These same authors seemed to be using me as their therapist, when the reader is more often interested in the author as therapist.