Infinite home - Kathleen Alcott

A charming and tender story of the disparate tenants of a Brooklyn brownstone and the community they form around their ageing landlord when their home is suddenly threatened.

Within a charming, if dilapidated, Brooklyn brownstone live a family of sorts: beautiful agoraphobe Adeleine, who surrounds herself with the past; Thomas, an artist who has shut away his materials in the wake of a stroke; Edward, a cynical stand-up comedian mired in depression and Paulie, a young man with William's Syndrome, a disease that grants him the irrepressible cheerfulness of a six-year-old.

Brought together by ageing landlady Edith, the tenants all live safely in tune with each other, even if they do keep to themselves. But when their home is suddenly and violently threatened, they are shocked into action.

Infinite Home is a poignant story of how a community is built and torn apart, and how when lives interweave a beautiful and unusual tapestry is made.

Kathleen Alcott's first novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, published in 2012. Her fiction, criticism, and essay appear in publications including The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Coffin Factory, The Rumpus, Explosion Proof, Five Chapters, and elsewhere. Born in Northern California in 1988, she currently resides in Brooklyn.

Praise for INFINITE HOME:

'Captivating' THE NEW YORKER

'Infinite Home is Alcott at her lyrical best. In her arresting new novel, she explores the boundaries of family and fraternity, with a Brooklyn brownstone as the nexus of the occupants' interlocking worlds' NATHAN ENGLANDER

'The voices in this book speak volumes. A luminous second novel from a first-class storyteller' KIRKUS REVIEW (STARRED REVIEW)

'A stunningly sensitive exploration of how families are made and unmade, and how the search for one's place in the world can come to define a life. Kathleen Alcott writes characters so achingly real, they will take up permanent residence in your imagination. This novel is the evidence of a wondrous talent at work' Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me

'Vibrant, inventive, expansive. Kathleen Alcott has peered through the walls of an everyday apartment building and transformed the private lives of its tenants into pure poetry' Said Sayrafiezadeh

'Starting with the first page of Infinite Home, you will feel it: something different, something brave, and something fundamentally amazing . Alcott's roving heart, and power as a storyteller, may very well be limitless' Patrick Somerville

'Alcott is part sculptor and part fire-breather-not only are these characters intricately carved but they stand up, walk right off the page and beckon us into a story that is both vivid and welcoming' Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

Praise for THE DANGERS OF PROXIMAL ALPHABETS:

'In fluid, bubbling prose Alcott has written a beautiful story of love and heartbreak' Wall Street Journal

'A wholly original and moving work, a nuanced consideration of the complicated ways in which we love and fail one another' Emily St. John Mandel