I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore: One reading won’t be enough to work out this clever novel

Like many of Lorrie Moore’s most avid admirers, I first discovered her work in my early 20s, and quickly decided she was my favourite. Back then, I wanted one thing from books: to be wowed. How good was an author, really, if she didn’t dance before me like a street performer, stop me mid-stride and distract me from the rush of life? Moore was an obvious drug of choice. With her puns and perfect descriptors; slogans and song lyrics; faces like “disastrous cupcakes”, husbands like “space aliens”, frogs who “looked like frogs who’d been kissed and kissed roughly, yet stayed frogs”, her work made the world seem delicious, absurd, hilarious.