A classic money pit scenario offers insights into the fragility of home, family and neighborhood in Pushcart Prize-winner Laken's thoughtful debut. Kate and her husband, Stuart, have been living a student lifestyle-complete with all-night parties and a rundown apartment-since leaving college seven years before. When Kate's parents help them buy their own home, they don't know that the handyman special was the site of a murder nearly 20 years earlier. Nor do they expect that the fixer-upper will be the wedge that drives them further apart. When Stuart walks away from their gutted home in the middle of Kate's ambitious remodeling, Kate forms new relationships with two men who have ties to the murder and the house. At times, the metaphoric potential in Kate and Stuart's cursed home overshadows the storytelling. For the most part, however, Laken avoids foundering in obvious symbolism, instead offering compelling reflections on broad issues such as neighborhood gentrification and the American dream as well as the personal struggles involved with marriage, family and the creation of a home. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In her first novel, Pushcart Prize winner Laken puts four people inside a "dream house." Kate and Stuart buy the house hoping to improve their marriage, but they hit the rocks when they learn of the house's grim past. Walker revisits the house, where he grew up and where the murder that sent him to prison occurred. Jay goes to the house to visit his colleague Kate and realizes that it's the place he was called to clean after the murder investigation was done. In the end, the characters have changed more than they would have ever imagined. Laken's novel has the feel of her short stories with its detailed examination of the characters' inner lives. The atmosphere of the house is entrancing, but the meetings of the main characters seem forced, as though they are all starring in their own separate novels. Still, Laken is an excellent writer, and the story is enjoyable. Recommended for larger libraries and academic collections.
In Laken's debut novel, a young couple tries to salvage their shaky marriage by buying a rundown house in a gentrifying Ann Arbor neighborhood. Laken (Creative Writing/Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) first takes us to that house on a July night in 1987, when it's just been the scene of a shooting. At least one person is dead, we learn, and Walker Price, eldest son of the black family that lived there, is in jail. Eighteen years later, Kate Kinzler ruefully contemplates the crummy Ann Arbor apartment she shares with husband Stuart. When they met, his easygoing ways were a relief from the high expectations of Kate's affluent, hypercritical father. But at 29, Kate is tired of living like an undergraduate and tired of aimless Stuart as well. He knows it, so when Dad flourishes a big check to house-hunt with, Stuart swallows his resentment. But he seethes while Kate undertakes obsessive renovations and finally walks out shortly after they learn their new home was the scene of a murder. Alternating chapters introduce Walker, out of jail at age 36, and it's clear he will cross paths with the troubled woman who bought his family's house. But Laken's careful plotting never seems contrived. The author so perceptively examines her varied cast's personal conflicts and social anxieties that the few big coincidences feel real, the sort of improbable conjunctions that happen in real life. Laken makes palpable the huge role that homes play in people's sense of identity and self-worth, and she delicately builds camaraderie between Kate and Walker, both grappling with the legacies of demanding fathers, without airbrushing the vast differences that divide them. A disaster occurs, but the human bonds thatlink these appealing characters are frayed, not broken. The author closes with a moving vision of "the struggle to hold lives together, to make shelter and lose it, to hope, to endure."Laken handles the fraught subjects of class, race and family bonds with equal candor and sensitivity in this powerful book. Agent: Dorian Karchmar/William Morris Agency
Laken is masterful at character construction as she explores issues of race and class and conveys the wreckage of individual lives and the emotions evoked by a house that is the source of joy and dreams as well as the site of tragedy.” — Booklist (starred review)
“A disaster occurs, but the human bonds that link these appealing characters are frayed, not broken. . . . Laken handles the fraught subjects of class, race, and family bonds with equal candor and sensitivity in this powerful book.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Offers insights into the fragility of home, family, and neighborhood. . . . [A] thoughtful debut. . . . Compelling reflections on broad issues such as neighborhood gentrification and the American dream as well as the personal struggles involved with marriage, family, and the creation of a home.” — Publishers Weekly
“A perfectly plausible and rational ghost story: sexy, sharp-eyed, and deeply haunted all at once. The past never goes away. It is still there, inside the walls of this wonderful book.” — Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love
“A psychologically engrossing novel about the homes we make—in our houses, in our neighborhoods, and in the hearts of our loved ones. Laken takes on that great unspoken American subject—class—and does so with frankness, acuity and surpassing feeling. DREAM HOUSE is a memorable debut novel from a fully mature talent.” — Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
“In DREAM HOUSE, Valerie Laken has built for us an elegantly constructed novel with quietly polished yet dazzling lines, and she has peopled it with heartbreakingly convincing characters.” — Eileen Pollack, author of The Rabbi in the Attic; Paradise, New York; and In the Mouth
“DREAM HOUSE is a novel of great reckoning. . . . Laken’s deft, generous, and brave debut will stay with you long after you’ve closed its covers.” — Nancy Reisman, author of The First Desire and House Fires
“DREAM HOUSE tells the compelling tale of those to whom a roof means more than merely shelter. . . . It’s a complex story—and Valerie Laken tells it with great skill. From first to final page, hers is a beautifully built novel and an astonishing debut.” — Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains, The Vagabounds, and The Count of Concord
“The perfect haunted house story for these unnerving times.” — New York Times
“An interesting, worthy debut. It’s not every book that will appeal to people who like old houses and those who love a shivery story; this one does. For that, kudos.” — Buffalo News
An interesting, worthy debut. It’s not every book that will appeal to people who like old houses and those who love a shivery story; this one does. For that, kudos.
A psychologically engrossing novel about the homes we make—in our houses, in our neighborhoods, and in the hearts of our loved ones. Laken takes on that great unspoken American subject—class—and does so with frankness, acuity and surpassing feeling. DREAM HOUSE is a memorable debut novel from a fully mature talent.
Laken is masterful at character construction as she explores issues of race and class and conveys the wreckage of individual lives and the emotions evoked by a house that is the source of joy and dreams as well as the site of tragedy.
Booklist (starred review)
DREAM HOUSE is a novel of great reckoning. . . . Laken’s deft, generous, and brave debut will stay with you long after you’ve closed its covers.
DREAM HOUSE tells the compelling tale of those to whom a roof means more than merely shelter. . . . It’s a complex story—and Valerie Laken tells it with great skill. From first to final page, hers is a beautifully built novel and an astonishing debut.
The perfect haunted house story for these unnerving times.
In DREAM HOUSE, Valerie Laken has built for us an elegantly constructed novel with quietly polished yet dazzling lines, and she has peopled it with heartbreakingly convincing characters.
A perfectly plausible and rational ghost story: sexy, sharp-eyed, and deeply haunted all at once. The past never goes away. It is still there, inside the walls of this wonderful book.
