Fiction
Released August 4, 2015
336 Pages
Bottom Line: Read it…especially if great writing can carry a book for you.
Affiliate Link: Buy from Amazon
Source: Purchased

Some of my favorite books showcase writing so gorgeous that it renders me virtually speechless. By speechless, I mean unable to think of much else to say about them other than to repeat how gorgeous the writing is on an endless loop! And, that’s how I feel about Infinite Home. I found myself reading slowly and frequently re-reading passages because I wanted to savor and appreciate them.

Infinite Home is a sweet, heart-warming story featuring an eclectic cast of characters living in a rundown apartment building. While there isn’t a ton of “action” in the conventional sense, Alcott made me want to learn more and more about these people by revealing their backgrounds little by little.

Without further ado, I’ll let that gorgeous writing speak for itself…

My Favorite Quotes from Infinite Home

The thin structure of the building ensured that no sound was contained by the apartment that produced it: the three floors gave and received heavy-footed trips to the refrigerator and unsnoozed alarm clocks and the burst-and-whoosh of bath faucets and late-night infomercials in a reliable cycle. Living with the proof of other people’s lone domestic movements had become a kind of comfort for the tenants, a telephone that didn’t require they speak into it, a letter that didn’t ask for a reply.

Edith (the owner of the building):

The present mix of renters was somewhat unlikely; that is, Edith might have thought so had she possessed the curiosity and energy to find anything at all very strange. She drank them in like tap water, unconcerned about their original source and the details of their travels to her, though she welcomed them in for coffee or tea and always waved when they passed on the street.

In the months without him, Edith had marveled at how many different types of quiet there could be. What had been so different about the levels of noise with him sitting in the chair, reading for hours in his drugstore glasses?

Thomas (a handicapped former artist):

He began to see the friends who stopped by as silly, vapid vessels, containers of undercooked opinion and little feeling.

Adeleine (a young woman recluse):

Her rejection of modern society and her collection of previous eras’ talismans thrived like weeds, without any cultivation, at a rate she couldn’t control.

On Edith:
I’ve been writing down some memories for her – she was upset because she said they were sort of losing their foundation, like they were flooded and pushed into the wrong rooms.

Claudia (Paulie’s sister and caretaker):

On Paulie:
He could sound like some slightly warped and delirious Hallmark card, a nursery tale fed ayahuasca, but his insistence on determining a why, on explaining away sorrow, made her feel she was some inferior model of human, resourceless, easily jammed.

Paulie (a thirty something year-old with the “disposition of an eight year-old”):

Paulie knew the word bioluminescence and wished he could use it more, that it showed up in recipes, on the checks Claudia scrawled for his rent each month, on the change-of-service signs in the subway. How are you doing today? Bioluminescent! He would say this all the time if his body made light you could see.

Paulie had loved the phrase “the men’s room” for as long as he could remember; it felt like a password into the world of suits and cars and wives that had otherwise rejected him.

Edward (a washed up stand-up comedian):

He was saddened by the proof of someone else’s pain and embarrassed by the open acknowledgement of it: he had perfected the art of devising clever ways to describe his inadequacies but felt like an unwelcome guest around those who wanted to dissect their own.