Super Host

by Kate Russo Narrated by Julia Whelan

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Renowned London artist Bennett Driscoll feels like a stranger in his own life. His wife has left him, his daughter is away at art school, and his gallery is going to stop selling his work, so he lists his home on a vacation rental site and moves into a shabby artist’s studio in the back garden while he figures things out. Kate Russo’s wise and witty debut novel’s heart lies in Bennett’s ability to find his way back to himself through unlikely connections with his guests. Readers will immediately find themselves rooting for Bennett.

“Get ready to smile¿.[A] sweet story and the perfect antidote to the chaos that's been 2021.” -the Skimm

A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart.

Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed.

A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests--lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie--unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.

Warm, witty, and utterly humane, Super Host offers a captivating portrait of middle age, relationships, and what it truly means to take a new chance at life.

Editorial Reviews

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

Narrator Julia Whelan infuses divorced, formerly successful artist Bennett Driscoll with all the bathos of a deeply depressed 50-something man in a midlife crisis. Bennett rents out his large home through AirBed and is an AirBed “Super Host.” His renters—and his affair with a much younger bartender, Claire—become the catalysts for his recovery. Whelan fully develops New Yorker Alicia, alone and lonely in England; American artist Emma, whose OCD and absent husband leave her paranoid; Kirstie from Devon, whose sexy, friendly manner soothes Bennett; and no-nonsense Claire, who dreams of owning a bookstore. Whelan’s unsentimental renderings highlight Bennett’s attempts to understand the women in his life: his 20-something daughter, the ex- who left him, Claire, and the women renters. Whelan’s performance offers hours of enjoyment. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

09/21/2020

Russo follows the travails of a divorced London painter–turned–apartment host in her witty, enjoyable debut. At 55, Bennett Driscoll’s paintings are no longer fashionable, and his career and private life have been derailed. To make ends meet—his gallery’s director says she’ll represent him again after he’s dead—Bennett rents out his large suburban London house on AirBed, an Airbnb-like site, and sleeps in his studio. He once scoured the Guardian for reviews of his work; now he reads reviews of his hosting and relishes his long-coveted AirBed status as Super Host while processing his recent divorce and trying to connect with his 18-year-old daughter. Russo is good at portraying female characters, particularly a series of tenants whose stories structure the novel, and who each make an impact on Bennett. There’s Alicia, a young American woman; Emma, an artist who rents the house with her husband; and Kirstie, an unhappy, failed hotelier. Russo plumbs the depths of her characters’ cynicism, which has taught them that men are indecisive and women remain primarily objects of sexual interest, and that to be a successful artist one needs to keep producing what sells. Russo is a formidable talent, and readers will be eager to see what she does next. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

One of:
The New York Times Book Review's 13 New Books to Watch For in February
Entertainment Weekly's Best New Books to Read in February  
Boston Magazine's 42 Books to Help You Get Through the Rest of Quarantine 
Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021
PureWow's 9 Books We Can't Wait to Read in February

“Russo’s clever debut evokes a time when travel wasn’t so fraught and strangers could get close enough to learn something about themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

"Brimming with...pure affection." —The New York Times Book Review 

“Here’s that rare thing: a wise, literary novel that is also funny as hell...the perfect antidote to this time of being shut in at home. Super Host gives me hope for the future, when we can all open our doors, and our hearts, once more.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, Buzzfeed

“The Airbnb-novel genre grows with this highly readable story.” —Entertainment Weekly

"[Russo] is a visual artist herself, and she handles Bennett's relationship problems and his artistic resurgence confidently, with wit, wisdom and humor." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[A] candid and captivating portrait of middle age...[and] what it truly means to take a new chance at life." —PureWow

“Get ready to smile….[A] sweet story and the perfect antidote to the chaos that’s been 2021.” –the Skimm

"A droll and endearing debut novel…Impeccably dry-witted dialogue and a twinkling, upscale urban backdrop against which sympathetic characters ache for a connection." —Portland Press Herald

“Funny, sharp, and artistic…A wonderful book flanked with irony, perversity, Rear Window voyeurism, and women who understand the task of reinvention, Super Host is a case study of what we talk about when we talk about success.” —Lit Hub

“[A] witty, enjoyable debut…Russo is a formidable talent, and readers will be eager to see what she does next.” —Publishers Weekly

“Kate Russo’s novel hasn’t yet been compared to Eleanor [Oliphant Is Completely Fine], but it should be. The character at its heart…is the perfect blend of impossible and beloved, and the story is handled with a mix of wise humor and compassion.” —BookPage

“A painter herself, Russo makes the act of creating art come alive, while effectively limning her characters in this incisive study of contemporary life.” –Library Journal

“In Russo’s charming and poignant debut…the author writes with warm sympathy and humor. A treat for fans of Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[A] pleasantly quirky debut…Bennett is a comfortable character to get to know, as is the London through which he ambles.” —Booklist

"Smart, enjoyable, clever but earnest contemporary comic novel about a likeable, seemingly hapless – but resourceful as it turns out – failing artist who sublets his quite apartment to fairly well off nuisances.” —Shawangunk Journal

"Super Host isn't just a charming, compulsively readable, romantically suspenseful novel about a lonely man who gets himself emotionally enmeshed with a series of short-term tenants. Kate Russo's wise and funny debut also has a lot to say about the neighborhoods of London, the frustrations and satisfactions of making art, and the courage it takes to start over in the middle of your life. It's a joy from start to finish." —Tom Perrotta

“I gobbled up Super Host, Kate Russo’s smart, funny, and surprising first novel. She writes with such a generous and insightful eye about love, loneliness and artistic ambition, and has redrawn the lines that connect people in fiction through the most modern and unlikely of settings, the home share.” –Jess Walter

"This is the compulsively readable story of Bennett, a once-famous artist now divorced and impoverished, who lives in his garden studio and spies on his tenants through the windows. Super Host is hilarious, and touching, too; Kate Russo is a terrific storyteller." —Claire Messud 

“Kate Russo’s debut Super Host is pure delight—smart, fun, poignant, and deeply satisfying. I loved it.” –Lily King

"Kate Russo's delightful novel is deft, fast, and startling. I could have sworn I was right there, and I never wanted to leave." —Luis Alberto Urrea

Library Journal

05/01/2020

DEBUT In this first novel, 55-year-old Bennett Driscoll is a super host, renting out on Airbed the elegant suburban London home where he once lived with the wife who has left him and living in his backyard studio. For Bennett Driscoll is also an artist, a former Turner Prize nominee who still paints regularly, though his gallery and his audience have, like his wife, abandoned him. At least his art-student daughter stays loyal. Bennett's essentially a genial if slightly flummoxed guy, though his wittily sardonic side is revealed in the many asides to which readers are privy. But his various tenants—socially maladroit Alicia, OCD-challenged Emma, and needy new divorcee Kirstie—as well as bartender and new love interest Claire highlight Bennett's essential problem: figuring out what were the missteps in his life and what he really wants now. Meanwhile, he's haunted by space, staring out at the home he once inhabited, his sense of invaded privacy paralleling his sense of lost self. VERDICT A painter herself, Russo makes the act of creating art come alive, while effectively limning her characters in this incisive study of contemporary life. [See Prepub Alert, 12/9/19.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

Narrator Julia Whelan infuses divorced, formerly successful artist Bennett Driscoll with all the bathos of a deeply depressed 50-something man in a midlife crisis. Bennett rents out his large home through AirBed and is an AirBed “Super Host.” His renters—and his affair with a much younger bartender, Claire—become the catalysts for his recovery. Whelan fully develops New Yorker Alicia, alone and lonely in England; American artist Emma, whose OCD and absent husband leave her paranoid; Kirstie from Devon, whose sexy, friendly manner soothes Bennett; and no-nonsense Claire, who dreams of owning a bookstore. Whelan’s unsentimental renderings highlight Bennett’s attempts to understand the women in his life: his 20-something daughter, the ex- who left him, Claire, and the women renters. Whelan’s performance offers hours of enjoyment. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2020-03-15
In Russo’s charming and poignant debut, a washed-up painter renting out his West London home discovers his guests may hold the key to resolving his midlife crisis.

With his career and marriage at dead ends, 50ish Bennett Driscoll’s life has come to a standstill. Once a Turner Prize–nominated rising star, he can no longer call himself a full-time artist; his paintings haven’t sold in two years, his gallery dropped him in favor of dead clients, and Eliza, his ex-wife (and primary breadwinner), left him for a hedge fund manager in New York. To make ends meet, Bennett has moved into the studio in his back garden and, much to his 19-year-old daughter Mia’s mortification, now rents his Chiswick house on the popular vacation-rental site AirBed. Instead of reading critiques of his art, he eagerly pours over his AirBed reviews as a “Super Host." But encounters with three different tenants may set the isolated Bennett back on the path to getting unstuck as an artist and as a man. Twentysomething New Yorker Alicia arrives alone, after her friends back out of the trip, hoping to reconnect with old London acquaintances. Artist Emma is also American, but her British husband has left her alone while he tries to get his brother into rehab. Diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Emma struggles to work on her drawings despite her conviction that Bennett is spying on her. Finally there is Kirstie from Devon, who masks the trauma of her recent divorce under a veneer of sexy good cheer. Russo’s lively narrative alternates between Bennett’s and the women’s perspectives, but it's a bit of a disappointment when Alicia and Emma check out with their stories left unresolved. Likewise, the self-absorbed hero’s indecisiveness becomes a bit wearying. Still, the author writes with warm sympathy and humor.

A treat for fans of Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177301112
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/09/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Demons You're Stuck With

In the hierarchy of linen stains, blood is at the top. Everyone thinks semen is the worst, but they're wrong. They only think this because of that popular TV show where inspectors take a black light to a hotel room and it lights up neon yellow, indicating bodily fluids all over the bedding. Since that report, people automatically throw off the bedspread in hotel rooms, assuming it's drenched in some stranger's spunk. It probably is; that's why Bennett Driscoll prefers to use duvet covers in his rentable four-bedroom house. Soap, hot water, and a rigorous spin cycle will scrub all the manhood out of a duvet cover. It's the stains you can detect with the naked eye that are the real problem. When Bennett throws back the duvets on checkout day, it's the sight of blood he fears most.

Fuck.

And there they are, halfway down the fitted sheet. Only a couple drops' worth, but on Bennett's bright white sheets they stand out like a red scarf discarded in snow. Their removal will require bleach and a lot of scrubbing. Recently, he bought a nailbrush or, for his purposes, a blood brush, to combat the really stubborn stains. In the beginning, he would just throw away the visibly soiled sheets and buy new ones, but now a year into renting out his suburban London house on AirBed, he has thrown away five sets of perfectly good sheets. Bleach is cheaper. He pulls the fitted sheet up from the corners, wadding it into a ball in the center of the bed. If the blood has transferred onto the mattress pad, that's double the work.

Dammit.

Recently, Bennett was awarded the status of "Super Host" on the AirBed website-an honor he earned for having a quick response rate and excellent reviews. Though it's never been his aspiration to become a host, he'd be lying if he said that the little medal next to his picture didn't fill him with pride. Until two years ago, Bennett was a full-time artist who never stuttered over answering the question, "What do you do?" In fact, nobody ever needed to ask him. He was the well-known painter, Bennett Driscoll. Everyone knew that. Okay, maybe not everyone, but enough people that he didn't have to worry about renting out his house to tourists. Unfortunately, things change, tastes change. It used to be that anything he painted would sell. In 2002, there was a waiting list. Now, sixteen years later, there are more than a hundred of his paintings in storage. His last solo show was in 2013. The critic for the Guardian wrote, "Driscoll cares so little for the current trends in painting that one wonders if he concerns himself with the contemporary art world at all." That pissed Bennett off, mostly because it was true. But a bad review is better than no review, he realizes that now. Since art critics don't review his work anymore, Bennett pores over each AirBed review as though it's the Sunday Times, scouring each for a new and nuanced understanding of his hosting skills. More often than not, they go like this: "Bennett was a welcoming and gracious host," "Bennett was very helpful," "Bennett has a beautiful home," and "Looking forward to staying at Bennett's house again the next time we're in London." They're not exactly Times quality, but nevertheless, it's nice to be reviewed favorably. Hey, it's nice to be reviewed, full stop. Sometimes he wonders if his ex-wife, Eliza, ever goes on AirBed to read his reviews. Probably not. She left a year ago to live in America with a hedge fund manager named Jeff, taking with her the steady salary from her publishing job that, until the divorce, had been paying their bills. That's when Bennett decided to move into the studio at the end of the garden and rent out the family home on AirBed. He doesn't think his Super Host status would impress Eliza. Almost nothing impressed her. He wishes someone would write, "Bennett has a beautiful home. He was the perfect host. No, the perfect man-exciting, interesting, and handsome in equal measure. He would make an excellent husband. I even bought several of his paintings because I believe they are the pinnacle of contemporary art." No such luck yet.

As he rounds the corner from the bedroom to the hallway, hip-hop is quietly thumping in the distance from the other side of the house. He carries the big wad of sheets down the wide staircase, careful to peer ahead of him from the side of the load. As he walks through the large, open-plan living space, the music grows louder. Bennett sings along confidently, although he can't quite bring himself to rap the lyrics. Instead, the words always come out melodically, each one dragging on a millisecond longer than it should. He discovered rap music around the same time he started letting the house, around the same time Eliza moved out. Though unable to name a single song, she claimed to hate hip-hop.

On the night he discovered the rapper Roots Manuva, he'd been out to dinner with his daughter. They were at some trendy Shoreditch restaurant, the kind of place that claims to sell street food, but in the comfort of the indoors. The music was, of course, too loud-he knew that even without Eliza there to point it out. He had to shout to be heard, which was difficult considering the task at hand was explaining to Mia why her mother had just fucked off to New York. At one point, Mia, needing to collect herself, went to the ladies' room. He hated the idea of his daughter crying alone in a stall, but he sat patiently, fighting the urge to follow her into the women's loo and check on her. At the time he was one of the few people on earth for whom the mobile phone wasn't an obvious distraction. Why pull out your phone unless you needed to make a phone call? Instead, in need of entertainment, he started listening intently to the restaurant's music:

Taskmaster burst the bionic zit-splitter

Breakneck speed we drown ten pints of bitter

We lean all day and some say that ain't productive

But that depend upon the demons that you're stuck with

He had no idea what a "bionic zit-splitter" was (he still doesn't), but something about how we "lean all day," and "the demons that you're stuck with" resonated.

"I can't stand still with you anymore," Eliza had said two weeks previously. Divorce papers had since been served. He was now doing his best to explain to his then eighteen-year-old daughter'something even he couldn't understand himself. Had he been standing still for the last twenty years and not realized it? Their whole marriage, he thought he was being reliable-a good father and husband. That's what women wanted, right? Reliability? Wait. He should be asking women what they want, not assuming. Eliza was forever pointing that out. His own father was anything but reliable. Well, that's not strictly true, he was reliably drunk all the time-a miserable man who was only happy when he was listing all the ways you'd wronged him. Bennett was happy, or so he thought. He loved being an artist. He loved Eliza and Mia with all his heart. Why not stand still? Where else would he want to go? Eliza thought he was stuck. "The demons that you're stuck with . . ." What were these demons that destroyed his marriage and why hadn't he noticed them? This was what he was pondering when Mia returned to the table.

"What is this song?" he asked her.

A die-hard Father John Misty fan, she just shrugged in ignorance as she sat down.

"Excuse me?" Bennett stopped a server moving quickly by with a plate of Mexican grilled corncobs. "Can you tell me what this song is?"

Mia, embarrassed, put her face in her hands.

"Roots Manuva, 'Witness,'" the girl said, her tone implying Duh.

Bennett pulled out the little black notebook he kept in his blazer pocket and wrote down Routes Maneuver. Witness. He had no idea which was the artist and which was the song title, but he'd figure that out later on Google.

At the end of the night, Mia burst into tears as they hugged good night. Though she'd only moved away from home the previous month, she told him she'd move back to keep him company.

"No, I won't let you do that," he said, holding her tight. "Besides, without your mum's income, I'm going to have to put the house on AirBed."

She cried even harder at this. The guilt weighed heavily on him. He might be stuck, but he wasn't going to let Mia be stuck with him.

He went home that night and bought Roots Manuva's "Witness" on iTunes. He played it twenty times on repeat before finally going to bed.

The music fades out as he reaches the laundry room-an annex off the kitchen with a large, American-style washer and dryer. When Eliza ordered the appliances from John Lewis ten years ago, he thought she was crazy. The environmental impact alone of these fucking things! Eliza loved to live like an American in London. Big house. Big car. Big fuckin' washer and dryer. "They understand convenience in America," she liked to say. "They don't enjoy suffering over there." It had long been Eliza's belief that misery was Bennett's preferred mode. And not just him, but all British men. All that floppy-haired, self-deprecating, Hugh Grant nonsense from the nineties had penetrated their psyches and they were all irreparably damaged. But, eventually, the car, the house, and the washer/dryer were no longer enough. Eliza needed an actual American man.

Bennett spreads the fitted sheet over the top of the dryer. After pulling down a bottle of bleach from the shelf overhead, he pours a little over the stain. Grabbing the blood brush, he braces himself by stepping back on one leg to get more traction. The dryer rocks back and forth as he scrubs, a few strands of hair falling down in front of his eyes. He's been lucky to keep a lot of his hair, though it's thinning on top. His solution is to brush it back. A little product usually holds it in place. Eliza found the product sticky. Bennett finds satisfaction in the fact that her new bloke, Jeff, is completely bald with a shiny dome to match his shiny, fitted suits. Twat.

Bennett stops scrubbing and regards his progress. Barely a dent. He goes back at it, bending his front knee more to bring himself closer to enemy number one. Engaged with the task in hand, he's startled when his phone, in the front pocket of his jeans, starts to ring.

"Mia! Hi, darling." It's particularly difficult to control his heart swells these days.

"You're coming tonight, right?" she chirps, skipping the pleasantries.

"Of course I am." He starts working at the stain again with his free hand. "I've just got to get the new guest checked in, then I'll be on my way."

"Ugh. Okay." Mia makes no secret of her disapproval regarding her childhood home being on AirBed.

"She'll be here at four. I'll give her the keys and then catch the Tube. Should be there about half-five. Is that alright?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

"I can't wait to see your paintings."

"I had a good crit this morning."

"Great!" He can't help but beam with pride.

"But the tutor told everyone in the crit that Bennett Driscoll is my dad. Cunt."

"Is that so bad?"

"I don't want to ride your coattails."

"I'm currently scrubbing blood out of bedsheets. Those coattails?"

"Eww, Dad! I'll kill you if you tell any of my classmates about that."

He smiles wide. Horrifying his daughter has long been one of his greatest pleasures. At nineteen, it is easier than ever to send her into frothy outrage. Why would Bennett Driscoll confide to a bunch of art school pricks that he's letting his house on AirBed? Is there anything worse than admitting that his paintings no longer sell? He'd rather watch Eliza and Jeff have sex. On second thought, no he wouldn't.

"Can I take you out for dinner after?" he asks.

"Can I bring Gemma and Richard?"

No. No. No. No.

"Of course, darling, whoever you want to bring."

His next guest is Alicia, a young woman from New York. Originally, she said she'd be traveling with a group of friends, which gave Bennett pause. He prefers families, but there is something trustworthy, maybe even a little naive, about Alicia in her smiley profile picture in front of the Brooklyn Bridge. When she booked the house a month back, she said there could be anywhere between three to five friends with her, she wasn't yet sure of the numbers. Bennett had explained that the house slept six comfortably, but please don't exceed eight people. That won't be a problem, she wrote back two days ago, explaining that it would be only her staying after all. He didn't want to pry, but what was a twentysomething young woman going to do in his big, suburban house all alone? It had been a good-sized house for three people. It's an enormous house for one, as he knows all too well.

That first day, when it came to him that Eliza and Mia were gone for good, the silence had been unbearable. Hip-hop now constantly follows him around the house like an entourage, sweeping the solitude under the carpet. He felt kind of silly the morning after he listened to "Witness" twenty times in a row. Bennett suspected that what Roots Manuva was rapping about probably had to do with racial injustice and that he shouldn't equate those "demons" with his own, but he couldn't help it. He loved the song's sense of urgency, and before long he owned the entire Roots Manuva catalog. The old Bennett was a Billy Bragg kind of guy. A Jeff Buckley fan. All that "depressing, nostalgic wallowing," Eliza called it. Musical evidence that he'd never change. He'd spent his whole life avoiding the things that weren't "meant for him," diligently adhering to the middle-class white man's algorithm for taste and respectability. But staying the course is rubbish, he's decided. He's trying not to "give any fucks" (a phrase Mia taught him) but in reality, he gives so many fucks. Like, a truly debilitating number of fucks. He can't even work up the courage to tell anyone besides Mia (is there anyone besides Mia?) about his recent obsession with the rapper. What would they think? Is his newfound love of hip-hop a "fuck you" to Eliza? He tells himself, no, it's more than that . . . but yeah, sort of.

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