This Place You Return to Is Home

by Kirsty Gunn

Book Overview

The author of Rain and The Keepsake, Kirsty Gunn has received international acclaim and established herself as a uniquely powerful and significant young voice - "a young master," in the words of the Los Angeles Times. Now Gunn gives us a collection of short stories that astonish with the resonant spareness of her craft. In these stories, mothers escape to remote country villages, making prisoners of their young children. A young man is made an indentured...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802136826
• ISBN13: 9780802136824
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Home' turns despair into beauty

Like an ice cube sliding down a hot surface, melting as it goes along, This Place You Return to Is Home slowly leaves a trail of raw emotion and intricate beauty.A compilation of 11 short stories, Kristy Gunn's book explores every aspect of sadness, despair and misery. Each story is more delicate and complex than the one before - beautiful on its own, but when joined with the rest, art.The first story begins with a mother taking her children away to the country, fleeing her modern life full of unnecessary objects. The next story continues the narrative, watching as the mother holds her daughters captive in a small village while she goes on long walks. The girls have no friends and are not even enrolled in school. The only escape available comes through reading books from the local library.Not all of the stories involve women and children, although most do. "Jesus, I Know That Guy" is about a man whose has wreaked havoc on his life by drinking too much. His friend tries to tell the man how alcohol has messed him up, making an example out of a girl who got away. The man acknowledges his problem, along with the loss of his ex-girlfriend. But he saw nothing but misery and monotony in a life with only one person. Still, he knows his life, now controlled by alcohol, is not what he wants it to be.The title story is extremely complex and vague, yet the main character's feelings jump off the page. A woman is reflecting on her childhood with her sister, born with developmental problems. Her parents could not love the sister in the way she needed to be loved, but their grandmother had that capacity. While the sister could not speak like other children her age, and sometimes did seemingly inappropriate things, she had the ability to love. Yet, she was sent away, and the narrator never got to live a life with her sister the way she would have liked.Gunn has an incredible sense of people's despair and misery. She comes up with an extraordinary number of settings and situations. Each one has insight and seems very real. It is Gunn's grasp of people's pain along, with her poetic writing, which makes her so incredible.

AN ACHING EMPTINESS PERVADES...

The stories in this slim volume are well-written and evocative -- but they left me with an empty feeling. The sadness that pervades all of them was one that was -- at least in my mind -- never resolved. Each of these tales gives the reader an aptly drawn portrait of someone in emotional turmoil and pain, at a turning point in their life, or looking back at a particularly traumatic episode -- but none of them really offer and resolution or conclusion. Gunn's descripitive powers are strong -- she accomplishes a lot in this regard with a minimum of words. As a result, most of the stories brought to mind rough sketches by an artist -- with the reader left to imagine the fuller details.I was left in most cases wondering what would happen to the characters from this point onward -- and for affecting me that deeply I gave the book four stars. I'm curious to check out one of her novels.

Gunn does it again

As is apparent through her first two novels, Kirsty Gunn is a beautiful manipulater of the narrative line. Her first novel, _Rain_, utilized beautiful narration, decription, and voice. Her second novel, _The Keepsake_, was mesmerizing in the use of theme and deep mood. Now, in this collection of short stories, Gunn has truly established herself as an important voice in contemporary fiction. The stories are set in the place of Gunn's childhood; like the early 20th century master of the short story Katherine Mansfield, Gunn hails from New Zealand. Without summarizing individual stories, it is safe to review this book by saying that it genuinely affects the reader; one cannot read this book without feeling strangely moved. Gunn's narrative technique and subtle use of theme are those of a master.