Sunday, May 12, 2024

"Housemates"

New from Hogarth: Housemates: A Novel by Emma Copley Eisenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two young housemates embark on a road trip to discover themselves in this sparkling novel of love, friendship, and chosen family in a fractured America, by the award-winning author of The Third Rainbow Girl

What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?

When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.

After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.

What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”— as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.

Warm and insightful, Housemates is a story of youth and freedom—a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.
Visit Emma Copley Eisenberg's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue