Book Review
Title: House & Home
Author: Kathleen McCleary
Publisher: Voice
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Number of Pages: 272
ISBN: 1401340733
 

Reviewed By: Karen O'Connor (Okinawa Correspondent - Japan)  

House & Home is the rich, beautifully detailed and heart-filled debut novel by author Kathleen McCleary.  It's a story about a woman named Ellen Flanagan, her daughters Sara and Louise, her husband Sam and their beloved yellow house in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon.  We meet the Flanagan family during a very tumultuous time in their lives.  Ellen is the owner of an eclectic neighborhood furniture and coffee shop.  She has decided to file for divorce from her want-to-be-successful inventor of a husband, Sam, not for the typical reason of adultery but because of an inventor's dream that just ended up costing too much financially and emotionally.  She agreed to allow a second mortgage to be taken out on her treasure of a house in order to put more money into the experimental stages of Sam's latest invention.  After Sam says that another move is necessary for his plan to take off, Ellen decides she can't take a lifestyle of uncertainties anymore and makes the decision to end her eighteen year marriage.  Unfortunately, because of the financial situation she is in she will have to sell her house.   

Cue the up-tight, perfectly groomed East Coaster and her team of contractors who has bought Ellen's Cape Cod home.  This woman is the antithesis of Ellen.  She proceeds in making Ellen's life hell by renting back the house to her for one last month so Ellen can pack up ten years worth of memories and move them and her two daughters into a house across town that she doesn't care about.  The new owner is the thorn in Ellen's side while dealing with the move and how it is effecting her and her daughters, especially her eldest Sara. At the beginning of the book Ellen believes that if it isn't her living in the house than no one should. 

"The house was yellow, a clapboard Cape Cod with a white picket fence and a big bay window on one side, and Ellen loved it with all her heart.  She loved the way the wind from the Gorge stirred the trees to constant motion outside the windows, the cozy arc of the dormers in the girls' bedroom, the cherry-red mantel with the cleanly carved dentil molding over the fireplace in the living room.  She had conceived children in that house, suffered miscarriages in that house, brought her babies home there, argued with her husband there, made love, rejoiced, despaired, sipped tea, and gossiped and sobbed and counseled and blessed her friends there, walked the halls with sick children there, and scrubbed the worn brick of the kitchen floor there at least a thousand times on her hands and knees.  And it was because of all this history with the house, all the parts of her life unfolding there day after day for so many years, that Ellen decided to burn it down."

As I read House & Home I was struck with the feeling the book physically has.  The cover is warm and inviting with warm yellows and gold tones in the bedroom picture and the lush greenery just beyond the windowsill.  The characters who live inside House & Home are very realistic and while reading, I am immersed in Portland, Oregon, enjoying a vanilla latte at Ellen's shop "Coffee @ Home".  Then I am hanging out in the yard between her house and her neighbor and best friend Jo's house.  I became emotionally invested in what happened to these people; Ellen, Sam, their relationship, the girls and the family buying Ellen's pride and joy, her house.  

Just when you suspect that the story will continue down one road, twists comes out of nowhere and make you second guess the characters motives; as is life.  I loved House & Home and the familiar voice that came from the author's story telling.  The characters could be real people facing these challenges today, especially with the way the US housing market is panning out.  I enjoyed the imagery McCleary used to set the mood and setting for her characters.  The author's own time spent living in her beloved Portland, Oregon came through on the pages of her novel about what happens when you think that the one thing you can't live without is actually not at the top of the list like you thought it was.

Karen O' Connor's Blog: Planet Books