Dream House

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Valerie Laken

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Overview

What price will people pay to hold their homes and dreams together?

When Kate and Stuart Kinzler buy a run-down historic house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they're hoping their grand renovation project can rescue their troubled marriage. Instead, they discover that years ago their home was the scene of a terrible crime—and the revelation tips the balance of their precarious union.

When a mysterious man begins lurking around her yard, Kate, now alone, is forced to confront her home's dangerous past. Hers is not the only life that has crumbled under this roof. This man's family also disintegrated here, as the result of one ...

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Dream House (eBook) Pub. Date: 2/3/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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Dream House (Reprint) Pub. Date: 1/26/2010 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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Dream House Pub. Date: 2/3/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

What price will people pay to hold their homes and dreams together?

Editorial Reviews

Marilyn Stasio

Valerie Laken has written the perfect haunted house story for these unnerving times. While the ghosts that come with this property don't rattle chains or shake the bed at night, they manifest themselves in subtler and crueler ways, by reminding us that the homes we love may not love us back.
—The New York Times

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

From The Critics

A classic money pit scenario offers insights into the fragility of home, family and neighborhood in Pushcart Prize-winner Laken's thoughtful debut. Kate and her husband, Stuart, have been living a student lifestyle-complete with all-night parties and a rundown apartment-since leaving college seven years before. When Kate's parents help them buy their own home, they don't know that the handyman special was the site of a murder nearly 20 years earlier. Nor do they expect that the fixer-upper will be the wedge that drives them further apart. When Stuart walks away from their gutted home in the middle of Kate's ambitious remodeling, Kate forms new relationships with two men who have ties to the murder and the house. At times, the metaphoric potential in Kate and Stuart's cursed home overshadows the storytelling. For the most part, however, Laken avoids foundering in obvious symbolism, instead offering compelling reflections on broad issues such as neighborhood gentrification and the American dream as well as the personal struggles involved with marriage, family and the creation of a home. (Feb.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780060840921
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 2/3/2009
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Valerie Laken teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her first novel, Dream House, was named of one Booklist's Top Ten First Novels and Kirkus Review's Best Books of 2009.

Read an Excerpt

Dream House

Chapter One

2005

Eighteen years later. In an apartment in Ann Arbor. In a bedroom hardly bigger than the full bed it contained, Kate Kinzler was waking up. Pinned down by the sandbags of her husband's limbs, she closed her eyes again, but the dream came back: she was barreling through a grocery-store parking lot, inexplicably fast—45, 50 mph. She was stomping on the brakes to no effect when a sleek brown Thoroughbred stepped into the aisle, in front of her. A smash of glass and metal, and his body flew through the air. She saw it through the sunroof, impossibly high and falling toward her fast. When she managed to wrestle the car to a stop, he had cracked the pavement, and was writhing and heaving, staring at her. Kate blinked at the dim ceiling. If she fell back asleep, it would go on, get worse. Her dreams often ended in catastrophes of her own making. She woke up most mornings wound tight and careful, trying not to live out any of her dreams.

It was a Sunday, six a.m. Late March, though through the window it still looked like February—lead gray and barren, with sparse piles of snow lining the streets. The trees were budless and black. Next to her, Stuart was giving off a faint snore, huffing out traces of rum. They'd thrown a party last night, and now the tiny bedroom was littered with dirty clothes and half-empty beer bottles. Stale smoke wafted in from the living room, which was a mess of spills and dirty dishes. They were twenty-nine, full grown, seven years out of college. And still living like this.

She peeled herself out from under Stuart, trying not to look at him. His snoring stoppedfor a second, and she held still until it resumed. From the pile of clothes she put on a sweatshirt and a pair of socks, and pulled her long, frizzy red curls into a knot on the top of her head. Muscling open the window, she crawled out onto the porch roof, a mild slope of black tar with cigarette butts scattered around, dropped from the window above by the three college guys who rented the attic apartment. She kicked them toward the gutters and sat down against the wall, drawing her arms and knees up into the sweatshirt.

They lived on Packard Street, at the edge of the student neighborhood strewn with plastic cups and abandoned couches. It was just a few blocks from the dorms they'd lived in as undergrads, and just thirty miles from the Detroit suburb where she'd grown up.

"Hey." Stuart stuck his head out the window.

His sandy, curly hair was mussed, his brown eyes still half-lidded with sleep. He had their blue comforter wrapped around his shoulders, like a boy with a cape. He smiled, locking his eyes on hers as if performing a magic trick in which everything except her disappeared from the world.

This was how he got her. Suddenly she thought of Bloody Marys and breakfast, a shower and sex and a morning in bed.

But then it took him two tries to squeeze through the window—he was thin, but clumsy and tall, and plainly still drunk. He dragged their new blanket across the damp, dirty tar and plopped down next to her with a thud that shook the porch. She pulled away. This was how it went lately: her rushes of feeling for him were so brief, so fragile.

"What time did you come to bed?" she said.

"I don't know. After three? Oh, you missed it—Billy told this story about when he was studying abroad in St. Petersburg—"

"And got beat up by the cops?"

"How'd you know that?"

"And had to sneak out of the hospital in his underwear?"

Stuart nodded incredulously.

Billy had been telling that story for years. They'd been hanging out with the same friends—mostly Stuart's—since college. They got drunk and had the same conversations over and over.

"I never heard it," Stuart said, mystified.

Kate sat quietly, watching the cars move up and down along Packard Street, a 30 mph zone that never cleared out. To the Laundromat. The food co-op. To church, to breakfast, to Kinko's. Each car probably filled with pairs of mad, wild lovers.

"Do I have to go to your folks' today?" he said after a while.

It was her dad's birthday. "Nah. If you do the laundry?"

"Deal."

He fell sideways in relief until his head landed in her lap, heavy as a bowling ball.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said.

He reached one hand up to her jaw. "What did you dream?"

She tilted her head away as politely as possible.

She had tried drinking, exercising, pills from her doctor—for anxiety, for depression, for sleep. She had tried buying things, cooking, reading books. She had tried telling herself everyone probably felt this way about their partner sooner or later. But she didn't believe it. No one had ever admitted such a thing to her.

They watched a college-age couple carrying duffel bags into the Laundromat across the street. The girl gave the guy a bump on the ass with her bag, and he stumbled and laughed, then held the door for her. The cars hissed past on the street, a white noise that you forgot about inside, though it was always there, if you listened.

"You should just skip your parents'," he said. "You always get this way when you go there. And then depressed after. Always."

Kate came from strivers. Stuart had been a break from all that. The first time she met him, she was hiding out at her usual corner table in the basement of the library, studying for a calculus midterm and twirling a strand of hair from the base of her skull around her index finger. Whenever her mind got soft or sleepy, she snapped off a single hair at the root and felt herself spring to attention. She'd lined up an almost perfect column of A's on her transcript. And whenever she got scared about her lack of a plan for life after graduation, she pulled out her transcript and felt her heart slow down.

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Ryan_G

Posted February 28, 2010

more from this reviewer

Dream House by Valerie Laken

When Kate and Stuart Kinzler buy a run-down historic home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they're hoping their grand renovation project can rescue their troubled marriage. Instead, they discover that years ago their home was the scene of a terrible crime-and the revelation tips the balance of their precarious union.

When a mysterious man begins lurking around her yard, Kate, now alone, is forced to confront her home's dangerous past. Hers is not the only life that has crumbled under this roof. This man's family also disintegrated here, as the result of one brief act of rage that may haunt him-and this house-for years to come.

Sounds good, right? Thankfully I can report that it was good, and not what I was expecting at all. For some reason I was thinking there was actually going to be a actual haunted house, don't ask why, I'm not really sure where I got that impression from. I think I was a little tired when I first read the description.

A lot of the reviews I've read have tended to focus on Kate, and while you would probably consider her the "main" character, I found myself connecting to and understanding Stuart way more that it seems others have. Here was a man, who's biggest flaw was the lack of any real sense self esteem. He never thought he was good enough for Kate, he was always thinking that someday she would realize the truth and disappear. How any man can be expected to function on a real level, when that thought is eating away at you, is beyond me. So of course he wouldn't want their life to change in any real way, because if it did, she may realize that she's moved beyond him. She would find out that she would be better off without him. So I understood why he was so unhappy with buying a house and moving away from their apartment, which was near the campus they first met. The relationship, while it may be slowly dying, was stable their. It was home.

So when Kate throws herself into remodeling the home, he never wanted, he feels her pulling away from him. Of course he never thought about this being her way of trying to not only reconnect their slowly dying marriage, but as a way to find a place where she truly belonged. I found Kate to be pretty emotionally closed to almost everyone in her life, she simply doesn't let anyone in, even when she thinks she has. Now that doesn't help Stuart's issues because he sees this as a validation of his fears. And like all fears they just keep feeding in on themselves. So when he loses his job, his sense of self is obliterated. Any sense of being the man Kate needed walked out the door, so he followed. I'm not sure how many men or women in his place wouldn't do the same thing. When every fear you've ever had comes true, your first response is to run. I'm not saying it's the right choice or the morally correct thing to do, but I understood it.

This was a intimate look at people who are struggling to find themselves and a place to call home, both physically and emotionally. The backdrop of the "murder" years prior to Kate and Stuart moving in and how the players in that initial tragedy interact and influence current events was expertly meshed together and added a dimension to the book that I would have missed had it not been there.

Now everything I just typed could be the exact opposite of what Valerie Laken was trying to get across in her beautifully written book, but it's what I took away from it and I'm very happy that I was gived the

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted May 5, 2010

great book

I really liked this book. I would recommend it.
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Anonymous

Posted April 27, 2009

Review Dream House

I had hoped this would have been a more traditional ghost story. Yes the charcters had haunted lives but it wasn't what I had hoped for. It was a good story but I felt cheated by the back blurb and the prologue. It started out feeling like a good ghost story and turned into a melodrama of haunted characters rather than a haunted house.
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harstan

Posted January 28, 2009

more from this reviewer

A good character driven tale

Married couple Kate and Stuart Kinzler have enjoyed hanging on to their college lifestyle though they graduated seven years ago. However, as she closes in on thirty, Kate wants more than a rundown Ann Arbor apartment and all night parties. Reluctantly Stuart agrees it is time to commit to their relationship, but loathes such a permanent fixture like a house. With the help of her parents, they buy a fixer-upper; but are ignorant that almost two decades earlier in the summer of 1987 a murder occurred in their new abode.

As Kate dives into the renovation project, Stuart walks out of the home and her. Despondent over the apparent end of her marriage Kate keeps working on the house. She soon meets African-American Walker Price who grew up in her new home before going to jail as a teen for the homicide almost twenty years ago, and her friend Jay comes by realizing upon arrival he cleaned the house after the police finished their murder investigation.

This is a timely look at the American strategic vision of individual ownership as the house serves as the connection between four thirtyish adults. The link between the Kinzlers and Walker is obvious; however the tie to Jay is a major stretch that is asking a lot of the reader to accept. Still this is a deep character driven tale as Valerie Laken goes inside the underpinnings of owning one¿s DREAM HOUSE with a strong look into the bonds that make effective nurturing relationships.

Harriet Klausner
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Posted October 12, 2011

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Dream House

Available on NOOK devices and apps

Overview

All Available Formats + Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Marilyn Stasio

From The Critics

Product Details

Meet the Author

Read an Excerpt

Rating Distribution

Dream House by Valerie Laken

great book

Review Dream House

A good character driven tale