Helpful Score: 2
First off, I agree with Wendy: Homebody is not a horror novel. In my 1998 review, I called it a "romantic ghost story." That's accurate, so far as it goes; but as with the best of Orson Scott Card, it defies genre classification. Homebody is simply (simply!) a well-written and engaging story.
What follows is the review I wrote, when this novel was first published, in 1998:
--------------------------------------------------------------
This romantic ghost story relies on a familiar horror backbone: a stranger with a tragic past moves into an old house that also has a tragic past, and is forced to reckon with the supernatural forces that dwell there. In Homebody, the stranger is an itinerant architect-builder who makes a lonely living by purchasing fixer-uppers, renovating them, and selling them. The house he buys in Greensboro, North Carolina, (where Orson Scott Card lives, in real life) has three mysteries attached to it: a tunnel in the basement, an attractive female squatter who refuses to leave, and a trio of weird doomsayers who live next door.
Card has a clear, well-honed writing style, full of human warmth--a style that is especially effective in the development of the central character, and in details of tools and techniques for renovating an old house. His approach to murder, danger, and threatening forces is so free of closeness or oppression, one might call it "anti-gothic." In a recent interview, he said, "I am completely uninterested in exploring 'evil.' Evil (and weak and wicked) people are all evil (or weak, or wicked) in the same boring ways. But good people are infinitely interesting in the ways they manage to be good despite all the awful circumstances of their lives."
Homebody is a pleasant tale about the triumph of love over evil, with a couple of bizarre twists to give it spice.
(TIP: If you go looking for more opinions, beware of the Kirkus Review: it has bad spoilers. For this one, you want the plot to be a surprise.)
--Fiona
My Bookshelf
(which has a lot of yummy
stuff, but not this book)
What follows is the review I wrote, when this novel was first published, in 1998:
--------------------------------------------------------------
This romantic ghost story relies on a familiar horror backbone: a stranger with a tragic past moves into an old house that also has a tragic past, and is forced to reckon with the supernatural forces that dwell there. In Homebody, the stranger is an itinerant architect-builder who makes a lonely living by purchasing fixer-uppers, renovating them, and selling them. The house he buys in Greensboro, North Carolina, (where Orson Scott Card lives, in real life) has three mysteries attached to it: a tunnel in the basement, an attractive female squatter who refuses to leave, and a trio of weird doomsayers who live next door.
Card has a clear, well-honed writing style, full of human warmth--a style that is especially effective in the development of the central character, and in details of tools and techniques for renovating an old house. His approach to murder, danger, and threatening forces is so free of closeness or oppression, one might call it "anti-gothic." In a recent interview, he said, "I am completely uninterested in exploring 'evil.' Evil (and weak and wicked) people are all evil (or weak, or wicked) in the same boring ways. But good people are infinitely interesting in the ways they manage to be good despite all the awful circumstances of their lives."
Homebody is a pleasant tale about the triumph of love over evil, with a couple of bizarre twists to give it spice.
(TIP: If you go looking for more opinions, beware of the Kirkus Review: it has bad spoilers. For this one, you want the plot to be a surprise.)
--Fiona
My Bookshelf
(which has a lot of yummy
stuff, but not this book)
Back to all reviews by this member
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
