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    Model Home: A Novel
    Model Home: A Novel
    Model Home: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    Model Home: A Novel

    Written by Eric Puchner

    Narrated by David Colacci

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Warren Ziller moved his family to California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of Southern California in the 1980s. But his American dream has been rudely interrupted. Despite their affection for one another-the "slow, jokey, unrehearsed vaudeville" they share at home-Warren; his wife, Camille; and their three children have veered into separate lives, as distant as satellites. Worst of all, Warren has squandered the family's money on a failing real estate venture.

    As Warren desperately tries to conceal his mistake, his family begins to sow deceptions of their own. Camille attributes Warren's erratic behavior to an affair and plots her secret revenge; seventeen-year-old Dustin falls for his girlfriend's troubled younger sister; teen misanthrope Lyle begins sleeping with a security guard who works at the gatehouse; and eleven-year-old Jonas becomes strangely obsessed with a kidnapped girl.

    When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move into one of the houses in Warren's abandoned development in the middle of the desert. Marooned in a less-than-model home, each must reckon with what's led them there and who's to blame-and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together. Subtly ambitious, brimming with the humor and unpredictability of life, Model Home delivers penetrating insights into the American family and into the imperfect ways we try to connect, from a writer "uncannily in tune with the heartbreak and absurdity of domestic life" (Los Angeles Times).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 12, 2010
    ISBN9781400186525
    Author

    Eric Puchner

    Eric Puchner is the author of the collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the California Book Award and the NYPL Young Lions of Fiction Award, and of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize. Eric is a former Stegner Fellow, a Pushcart Prize winner and winner of an award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories, Zoetrope, Best American Non-Required Reading, Tin House, and Granta. His personal essays appear regularly in GQ, Medium, and elsewhere. Eric is a professor in the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.

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    Reviews for Model Home

    3.5/5

    100 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this novel - the interwoven storylines of the different family members, the characterizations, and 1980's SoCal setting were all very vivid and engaging.
    • 4/5
      If you're looking for a "happily ever after" ending, then this is not it. If you're looking for real life, then this is it. The Zellers are a family who've moved away from each other emotionally, like so many do. The father is hiding the fact that he's lost all of their money in a bad investment. The mom's real feelings are totally unknown to her family, and the 3 children are rotating around in their own worlds. Unfortunately, tragedy brings them back to caring about who each other are.
    • 4/5
      A quirky and astonishing novel, equal parts melancholy and humorous. I found myself comparing it to Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu--the 80s California setting, the offbeat characters and events, the occasionally heart-breaking prose struck similar chords. What Puchner does within these parameters is switch points of view, mostly effortlessly, between the five members of the Ziller family: dad Warren, mom Camille, oldest son Dustin, daughter Lyle, and youngest child Jonas. He wrings a lot of tension out of the dramatic irony: we know important information that other characters don't. A character will do something, and three pages later another character will witness the action yet not understand it as we do. But rather than ratcheting up a hokey sense of suspense, Puchner slowly turns the pressure up, and we are driven to care because we're invested in his characters. The tragedy that strikes the family--alluded to on the dust jacket flap--completely surprised me, and changed the story rather dramatically without throwing me off.

      I will say that Warren, the father, whose dream of California bliss and riches comes up short, was at times the least compelling of the characters. The novel's events spin around Warren's choices and bad luck, and Puchner draws him well enough, but when I was reading about Warren, I found myself wanting to go back to the other characters. As for the ending...well, I'll leave that to others. But Model Home is an excellent read.
    • 3/5
      I did not enjoy reading this book, and was very relieved to finish it and move on. Although the author can write, the book was a slog with one miserable character after another making the wrong decisions, leading to grim consequences. Unlike Olive Kitteridge, where superb writing celebrated a hateful character, this writer could not find the delicate balance needed.
    • 5/5
      Wow, I really liked this. I went in expecting it to be just one more of the family-in-crisis books that seem to be dominating the Tournament of Books this year. But I loved it. The writing is good, I cared about all the main characters--I thought it was fantastic. (Having said that, it probably should really be 4 1/2 stars because there are some anachronisms--although that sort of thing doesn't bother me as much as it bothers others--and some meandering in the second half, with the introduction of a couple of characters who didn't really work.)
    • 3/5
      Kind of a mixed review on this one. The start is good family dysfunction of a family living in what we would now call a McMansion in Southern California. Thought the book would be a bit of nostalgia. It however takes a turn with the 2nd part of the book. At that point after a great family tragedy I nearly put the book down and didn't want to read any further. It did however pick up. The family starts to put themselves back together, although not where they had all started out. Not one of my favorites but still a good read.
    • 5/5
      Although I prefer to not make comparisons, it is inevitable after reading Model Home. I love American Beauty, in large part due to the excellent character development, and Model Home hits that same mark for me. Even though I found most of the characters completely aggravating and I wanted to reach through the pages to grab them by their shoulders to shake the holy heck out of them, wow - what strong writing to elicit my emotion! I did have to remind myself several times that the story is set in 1985...what a difference 25 years has made in our awareness of some of the issues presented. First off, if the story were set in present day, loveable and quirky Jonas would have a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Aspergers Syndrome. Yet the Ziller family does not question Jonas' idiosyncracies. I would consider that a positive for Jonas if it weren't for how, in their ignorance, the Zillers tend to treat him as an embarrasment to their family. Also, the parents are just so non-reactive to the behavior of their teenagers Dustin and Lyle (short for Delilah). They use such disrespectful language when talking to their parents, but no reaction. Sixteen year old Lyle informs her mother of her physical relationship with the security guard for their gated utopia, and still nothing...are these people just numb or what? I loved the mental images created at the thought of living in an abandoned neighborhood in the middle of the desert! I had the displeasure of living in the Antelope Valley myself in the early 90's and the author's descriptions took me right back to the oppressive feeling of barrenness, sand-filled wind, and tumbleweeds blowing across my yard in the scorching heat. Add in the pungent smell of a toxic waste dump and a disgruntled postal carrier; I could feel the Ziller's sense of defeat! Having the story set in 1985 was a wise choice in my opinion. If set presently, the stigma of the Ziller's situation would have been completely different. Rather than feeling the shame of deteriorating in front of their Stepford SoCal neighbors, they would have simply been another recession statistic; part of the forclosure-club. In this time period, they were outcasts for daring to drive a beater car down the streets of Herradura Estates or for having patio furniture in their living room. This is a novel that I will not soon forget.
    • 4/5
      I thought this story of the American Dream gone horribly awry would have a wry humor, but instead it was just overwhelmingly depressing. Everything bad that could happen to this family did, and there was little joy to redeem the story. The book was well-written and the characters rang true, but reading it became a bit of an ordeal as the depressing events just piled up on one another. I would recommend this book for the vibrant literate writing, but definitely don't pick it up if you're in the mood for a light beach read because this novel is gloomy enough to depress any beach vacation.
    • 4/5
      'You've got your whole life ahead of you, people liked to say. In truth there was not much time, a blip, and most of what you did was a mistake. You were lucky to find a safe and proper home.'The Zillers struggle to hold onto their home in SoCal after the father makes a shady real estate investment. The parents and children make bad choices and an unexpected tragedy unravels their lives. The father's story is my favorite as he hides the impending financial crisis from his family, but the author's treatment of the mother's career as a school documentary film maker seemed too improbable. The 3 children are spot-on and I really rooted for them as their parents come to realize that the only investment that pays off is the family. recommended for fans of contemporary, well-written, gritty family dramas