If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home by Now

by Sandra Tsing Loh

Book Overview

Bronwyn and Paul are a couple stranded at a temporary stop on their inevitable way to Hollywood glamour--in a house that is so ugly, so frayed, so...brown that it's almost cool. But just as the Bohemian life is wearing painfully thin, their fortunes change, catapulting them out of the world of practical problems and into the world of ethical ones.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573226955
• ISBN13: 9781573226950
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Captures post-graduate life in California

I found this book both funny and touching, a poignant story that drew a vivid picture of Los Angeles. It's set in the time of the Rodney King-related riots, so it might seem a little dated by now, but I still find it a lovely story.

Wannabees are disillusioned

Bronwyn and her hussband Paul and his brother Jonathan are idealistic but ambitious intellectuals living in Los Angeles. They become involved in series of ventures that fail and trends that prove disappointing. Attempts to complete a PhD, get a tenured academic post, write a novel, sell a screen play, make money in real estate, and start a computer software company each end in failure. Each new fashion becomes outmoded. They are contrasted with Paul's parents who live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and winter in Florida in steady unglamorous prosperity. The parents work and save, celebrate a fiftieth wedding anniversary, and go to church on Sundays. The satire is sharp but not savage, and most of the characters are nice people. The book culminates in the liberal ambivalence produced by the Watts riots and drifts to an inconclusive ending. I'm glad she resisted the temptation to a dramatic tragic ending but would have liked to have known more of what became of Paul and Bronwyn.

From grad student to grownup: a perceptive, witty treatment

Perhaps this book speaks to you more if you've lived it, but I thoroughly enjoyed this treatment of a grad student's rather bumpy transition to the "real world" (to the extent that LA is the real world). The heroine, ground down by years of genteel poverty, succumbs to the buried longing we all have for life as depicted in upscale catalogs, with predictable but hilarious consequences. She also experiences the rather rude realization that most of us have to make, that life often does not work out as planned, and manages to achieve something like a state of grace as a result.Some of the LA characters and events seem like cardboardy stereotypes, but in general there is a depth of feeling here that is absent in the author's rather brittle NPR commentaries. If Sandra Tsing Loh lives up to her potential, she could be the Jane Austen of our day. She is capable of viewing her characters and our society with a rare and wonderful mix of irony and compassion; I'm hopeful that she will not succumb to the temptation of the one-liner, but will continue to develop her genuine talents in her forthcoming novel and novels to come.

A quick, entertaining read

I read this book for my monthly book group and I was surprised at how fast it was! I read the book in two short nights and laughed to myself several times. I often noticed similaries between Bronwyn and myself especially with the Trader Joe's phenomenon. As a twenty-something, I found Bronwyn's 'boho' lifestyle much more appealing than the one she aspired to achieve. I laughed out loud as Bronwyn not so subtlely demanded recognition for her efforts to climb the social ladder. Where in the world does that silly ladder lead anyway? I was a little disappointed with the ending. I wanted Bronwyn and Paul to sell their Geo and reclaim their decrepid VW!

Unputdownable

I couldn't put this book down. It is everything that I want in a novel: characters who remind me of myself, beautiful prose, hilarious satire of contemporary mores, and a story that hooks me in and doesn't give up. Loh is like a funnier, less mannered Tom Wolfe. Spectacular.