The Homemade God
Joyce doesn’t hang about. She mentions undertakers and the police in the second sentence, so we know someone is going to die. However, her gift at evoking a sense of place and her obvious delight in nature make the glorious scene-setting a delicious distraction ... Some of Joyce’s favourite motifs are here: the cold or absent mother, the tension between a father and son, grief and its friend guilt, and the power of pilgrimage. However, there’s a new heft and grandeur, not only in the sophisticated characters and the fancy Italian real estate, but in the hidden darkness that can exist in a family ... There are big ideas in The Homemade God that are brought to life by a cast of complex, intelligent adults ... These are difficult, wealthy, loving and funny people with whom it’s a privilege to spend a murderously hot Italian summer. Rachel Joyce is firing on all cylinders with The Homemade God and I can’t think of a better holiday read.
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Moves between being a page-turning mystery and an astute study of family dynamics, and readers who like a book to pick a lane and stay in it may find this frustrating. But Joyce is a thoughtful writer, and the narrative gear-changes echo the novel’s concerns: the gap between image and reality, the difference between who we are believed to be—by ourselves and others—and who we really are ... This is what Joyce does best: untangle family ties. She reveals how a family is built on a fragile collective agreement about what that family is: an ongoing collusion ... Joyce is also exceptionally good at blending the big stuff of life with the small, showing how losing a parent is a surreal mix of gut-wrenching horror and banal admin, interspersed with hysteria and binge-drinking ... The close focus on the siblings can sometimes mean their respective partners and other secondary characters are less clearly seen, but this is a minor quibble in an otherwise sharp, absorbing and emotionally intelligent novel.
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Joyce thoughtfully mines the depths of both human frailty and resilience while playing with the passage of time and the pangs of memory ... A perceptive writer, Joyce’s wit and wordplay are fully deployed, too, creating characters that entertain as they evolve. The Kemps laugh and cry, fight and scream together, for better or worse.
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