Guest House

Captivating Debut Novel!

Melba is in her fifties, long divorced and estranged from her family of origin. Raised by a harsh, joyless father, she rejected her Mormon faith when she came of age and left home. She has enjoyed her hard-won independence for over thirty years, and has become a tremendously successful real estate agent. Her life changes when she witnesses a fatal accident. She gives up her career and stops driving, launching into a simpler life.

Then she takes in a boarder, gorgeous 28-year-old JoLee Garry, a manipulative, narcissistic woman who brings a string of unexpected guests in her wake. JoLee is a walking tangle of personality disorders. Caught between JoLee and her alcoholic husband, Gary, is their 11-year-old son Matt. He is an imaginative, introverted bookworm, teetering on the brink of disaster in the midst of his parents' drama. When he comes to Melba's house for Thanksgiving, both of their lives begin to change forever.

This story pulled me in, becoming more and more difficult to put down. The quirky, troubled cast of characters reminded me a bit of Larry McMurtry. The author exquisitely described their feelings and experiences, especially Melba's, and she looked at her characters with both unflinching honesty and compassion. I fell in love with Melba and Matt and hated to let them go at the end of the novel.

This book also touches on some interesting themes. It looks at a person trying to live in the world having as little negative impact as possible. It explores the complexities of family relationships. It also looks at what it means to live a life of independence. It allows Melba to avoid heartbreak and betrayal, and it frees her to create a life on her own terms, living where she chooses and making her own decisions about religion, career, and relationships without needing to consider how it affects others. However it also isolates her, squandering her tremendous capacity for love.

The only thing that disappointed me was the ending. There was a long, slow build-up to the climax of the story, then it ended abruptly, without time for a natural resolution. I wish there had been more time for closure with the characters in the story.

This novel is compelling, quirky, and often heart-wrenching, and I highly recommend it to fiction lovers. I look forward to reading more of Barbara Richardson's work.

Real Life Characters

These characters were real life people without any sappiness. Melba is a great character for Earth Day, a consumer who stops using a vehicle and doesn't sell it so no one else can use it either. Of course her reason has little to do with the environment and more to do with the shock of a vehicular death, but still, one really wonders if one could actually live without a vehicle in the West. Her home becomes a guest house not because she wanted a guest house but because a friend needs help. There is nothing easy about these characters, they are filled with love and rage and jealousy and self-involvement. The young boy Matt reaches in and touches Melba's heart and Melba touches him and gives him a grounding that his parents weren't able to achieve. The story is well writen and the desolate surroundings of Atomic City easy to visualize. I was definitely left with a feeling that there could be a sequel and that it would be a good story.

Bridget's Review

It only takes one powerful moment to change a person forever. When Melba witnesses the death of a complete stranger, it is a pivotal moment in her life. Now that she has realized the importance of life, she is calming down and ready for a peaceful existence. Her roommate, JoLee, brings different people into their home and Melba is forced to make more life changing decisions.

I loved that this book is written from different perspectives. Each character brought a little something new to the book. You should read this book and make sure you have time to read it all in one sitting because you will not be able to put it down.

Guest House by Barbara K Richardson

You won't find your "average guest" staying in this house! After Melba witnesses a collision that includes a cyclist, she decides it's time for a change. She quits the rat race of success & moves into an old farmhouse. That is where her guests come in!

This is both a story about tragedy & change. It also tells of love, friendship & strength. A heartbreaking, touching story that will tug at your heart!

I enjoyed this book very much & would definitely read another by Richardson. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories about life, struggle & strength. A great read by Barbara K. Richardson!

Beautifully written debut novel! So real...

WOW! This was a great book. I truly didn't want it to end.

The writing was so easy to read, it just flowed beautifully. The characters were all so well developed. The story was quite a journey of highs and lows. This story touches on almost all human emotions; love, hate, betrayal, fear, jealousy, loneliness, power, and everything else.

When I say I didn't want the story to end I truly mean it. I could have just kept right on reading about Melba, JoLee, Gene, Matt, Bill, and everyone else. I became so attached to all of them. Even though they weren't all the best of people they were all so real. I could relate to all of what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing.

I just got so lost in this book. It was so real, I felt as if I was becoming a part of the story.

I don't want to give up my copy, but per author's request I will be passing it along. Even more than I want to keep it, I want to share it with others.

Great book!

Grips you by the throat and doesn't let go

In Guest House, Richardson indeed "clears us out for some new delight," as in the Rumi epigraph she chose. The author conjures a kaleidoscope of characters, whose colored shards of light shift and shift again into patterns of terror and beauty as she turns her tale in our hands.

These characters continue to move inside us, long after the book is closed, nudging us to reflect on the stranger we encounter each day, and the part we might play in each other's story.

What an Interesting Book!

What an interesting book! In the beginning, I had a hard time following where things were going. The story started with Melba, then went to different characters, as I tried to see where things were going. Then, the story took on shape, as the characters came together. Looking back, the way the book started was really interesting. It had held my interest. I wanted to know where things were going to end up and why things were happening the way the were. When they all came together, the book was quite hard to put down, and the end was a real page-turner.

There characters were quite believable, and some I swore lived right near us! I imagine these people could be a neighbor that you would be able to identify. The storyline centers around a good soul who helps others when they are down on their luck. The story is full of hurt, hope, deceit, love, rewards and a lesson or two that is learned.

Adult rating: There are numerous sexual encounters, although not very graphic, alcoholism, drug usage, adultery, child neglect, physical and mental abuse, and language.

Great Read

I loved this book. It really spoke to the resiliency of children who have the misfortune of being born to bad parents. I loved that Matt not only was able to rise above his upbringing but that he inspired Melba and made her life better just by being part of it. Melba couldn't have loved him more if she would've been his real mother. I saw in her the best part of parenting - being a partner with your child and making him an equal and important member of the family. I thought of how many women are like JoLee. The idea of some fictional relationship was more important to her than her child. It's a very sad commentary on parental priorities and on women who don't know how to be on their own. I loved Melba's strength and happiness in her single world.

wonderful heroine, fabulous -- often funny -- writing

One afternoon, Melba Burns -- a thick-ankled, 53-year-old realtor in Portland, Oregon who is the utterly likeable heroine of GUEST HOUSE -- witnesses the accidental death of a bicyclist. She takes this event as a "teleflorist delivery from God," writes her novelist Barbara K. Richardson, who adds, "She would make his death count. However lonely and odd her stance, she held her ground like an old Doug Fir whose whole forest had been felled for subdivisions but just you wait -- a flood was coming and only the mud-pocked tree would stand." And Richardson writes beautifully about how Melba does indeed make the young man's death count. She stops driving, quits her lucrative job, and after grounding her great and recognizable kindness in an old farm house she has bought in the worst neighborhood in town, takes in one member after another of a family which has been blown to smithereens by alcohol and impetuousness. Novelist Richardson, who is part comedienne, part landscape artist and part Zen master, reveals the vulnerability of her characters with utmost delicacy. All of the adults have done great harm to themselves, and those of them who are parents have hurt children, too. Not everyone survives. But there is salvation here, and it happens in this addictively-readable and often hilarious novel the way it happens in life -- imperfectly, without applause, but with sudden rushes of rightness and heart.

A new and original voice

I have just finished GUEST HOUSE and I loved it. I rarely want to sit down and read a book all over again but that is just what I'm doing with this one. Barbara Richardson's novel has the richness of style of a Michael Chabon, the poetic prose of Janet Fitch, the sparse opulence of Annie Proulx, and the humor of Fannie Flag, yet it is her own original voice. I admit that when I first started reading I thought there were too many Point-of-view characters, and not enough of Melba Burns as a clear-cut protagonist but as I read on and got into the rhythm of it I found myself liking the different points of view. I loved the fast-paced, wham-bam hurling language and the toughness of it all. The characters were brave and angry in a world that offered them little. This is a novel, deserving of awards and a great book to discuss in a book club.
I can't wait to read more from this new and talented writer.
Nel Rand

Highly recommended!

Not long ago I obtained a pre-publication copy of Guest House. I made the wonderful mistake of reading it late one night as I stood in the kitchen, scotch in hand, waiting for the noise of the day's events to be overwhelmed by the desire for sleep. An hour later I was still standing, marking in the margins those places that astonished me.

The characters in Guest House come to life as they careen through the hit-and-run chaos of a wildly dysfunctional family. Richardson, who has an eye for the quirky grace that shows up in the unlikeliest of places, brings such a generous and unflinching gaze to her world that I felt not just invited, but compelled to follow. In the end, her generosity rubs off; I cared deeply about her characters, and not just the innocent ones.

Guest House is a banquet: tragic and funny, wry and sexy, dark and triumphant. Like the main character, Melba, who wants "to sink into the bones of things," I found myself looking at my own world in a different way, newly reminded that love is found in the glorious imperfection of things.

No text was provided for this review.