Homecoming

I think this is an important book. I found many passages difficult to stomach, but the writing was deeply layered and so original that it was worth the struggle. This writer understands sorrow. While I have never lost a family member, I felt like I was feeling everything Katey, the main character was feeling. It was like being on a journey in one young woman's life. I did really identify with the "you can never go home again" theme in the book. It was accurate, the hardship of trying to go "home" after being away for so long, where everything is both familiar and very, very strange at the same time. It was also a very funny book. I think I must be about the same age (I am 25), because the cultural references added quite a lot, and some of the other characters seemed like people I know in my life. I didn't think I would like Homecoming when I started it, but it has stayed with me since. To me, that makes a good book.

A short, yet emotionally challenging tale of the death of a sister. Did Katey learn from Reese? Go with Katey on this pilgrimage that examines and reflects the power of place, the pull (and push) of family, of sisterhood. Our protagonist simultaneously avoids and throws herself headlong through this journey. Gussoff's prose puts you there seeing, smelling, sensing what Katey does. Let her take you on this cathartic trip. I can't wait to see where Ms Gussoff takes us next!

This short novel had to be one of the best I have encountered in months. Gussoff does use complicated metaphors, but in a masterful and surprising way. Katey, her main character, is an absolute postmodern icon. She is a lost soul, lost in a world without language, unsure of her ability to give or receive love. Yet, she remains devastatingly human. If you have ever lost anyone close to you, I think this book will be familiar in its naked heartache.

Gussoff's first novel is a bold step in the tradition of other Serpent's Tail authors, and she carries the torch proudly. Much of the book centers around one decision, one act by Katey, the protagonist - how to tell her family that her older sister is dead.The narration jumps between past and present. Katey relives memories of growing up in a simultaneously distant and suffocating family, where Reese, her older sister, was the primary influence on her ideas of life and love. At the same time, she struggles with returning to her hometown and finding a way to tell her parents and younger sister that Reese has been murdered.This is less a mystery than a modern bildungsroman, a tale of inner self-discovery. Gussoff's book is a frank and, at times, darkly comic look at what happens when life slips the tracks. Although we learn throughout the novel that Katey has never been a conventional girl, the conundrum that this book finds her in is a challenge that ultimately leaves the reader questioning his or her own reactions, feelings, and abilities.

Ms. Gussoff is an original. Her gift for language, her off-beat world, her main character's courage and grief and youth are all gripping. A short but power-full book, "Homecoming" can be read in a day or a night, leaving you outside your own life and inside the world of a sister's death, a lover's loss, through the consciousness of a young woman's quirky, poetic, haunting and raunchy-sad, but strong life. Highly recommended. A great talent is beginning to bloom here. I look forward to her next works.