If you’re facing a painful trip home this month...ttuck a copy of Kate Christensen’s tempestuous new novel in your suitcase. There’s a good chance your own travails will pale next to those faced in Welcome Home, Stranger. And if not, at least Christensen will serve as a wise captain to guide you through the family storm. Of course, novels about going home are as common as flight delays. And a certain degree of rigor mortis has crept into the plot of relatives gathering in the wake of a death. But Christensen’s narrator charges into that worn storyline with refreshing candor ... a deeply endearing story about confronting one’s past and constructing a new future — under extreme duress ... If Christensen didn’t have such a clever sense of humor, the situation she throws her narrator into — returning to help spread Mom’s ashes — could feel intolerably dreary. But everything about this initial homecoming has been designed to prick Rachel with comic humiliation ... The success of this novel, Christensen’s eighth, rests wholly on her ability to create the artful illusion of ricocheting events — sudden swerves of grief, chance encounters that spiral toward disaster and a series of setbacks that pile up Job-like at the worst possible time ... the most lovely ending of a novel I’ve read all year.
Incisive ... Rachel’s deep observations, bitter and smart and sad, steer us through this coming-of-middle-age tale of a driven, wounded woman seeing her present self in contrast to her life of origin.
Unflinching ... Christensen’s use of present tense brings an immediacy and urgency to her storytelling ... Christensen also does a skillful job of animating difficult family relationships while avoiding a conventional arc of forgiveness ... Doesn’t always deliver. Driven by Rachel’s over-analytical first-person voice, the narrative — as well as the dialogue — is frequently freighted with exposition, which, in turn, sometimes flattens the reckless spirit of the novel.
...a brief, brilliant story of grief and love ... How Rachel handles this stage of life is subtle and instructive, and it's why we should have more novels like this, told from this snarky viewpoint. Rachel examines her life, the ups and downs of temperature and mood as a scientist examines the planet, trying to find beauty, trying to be hopeful. Like a shark, she keeps moving. Her insights are small, even obvious. They've been there all along; she just needed to articulate them. And she does, beautifully.
...one of the joys of a Kate Christensen book is her signature exuberance. No one writes about excess and appetite with such gusto, making over-the-topness a mainstay. While moderation is at times a goal – in this case, Rachel has stopped drinking, and pines for the freeing of alcohol – it is always elusive and rarely fun. Sobriety is the wish that seems to cut both ways. By the end, this book satisfies on a number of fronts. It’s about the pull of family you thought you knew, but didn’t; of long-buried resentments and freshly minted ones, as well. As a meditation on grief, it is, by turns, raucous and fiery, despairing and resolute – and wittily entertaining throughout. Still, it is the horror of Lucie, 'a criminally neglectful mentally ill mother,' as Rachel depicts her, that so animates this book, a portrait for the ages.
From gasp-inducing absurdities and betrayals to a profound sense of our paralysis in the glare of climate change to a full-on embrace of family, love, home, and decency, Christensen’s whirligig tale leaves readers dizzy with fresh and provocative insights.
Penetrating ... The character Lucie, an immature, thwarted tyrant, is particularly well drawn. Readers in search of an engrossing family drama will find much to like.
Throughout this jumpy novel, Rachel has been lost in Dante’s figurative dark wood of midlife, but in its long finale she finds herself wandering around a literal dark wood complete with bears, until a path forward reveals itself. Underbaked novel about how you can go home again and, if it’s coastal Maine, probably should.
