Cardnak akadnak ennél sokkal jobb írásai is, de azért meglátszik a keze nyoma. Időnként vannak zseniális pillanatai, sok témát behoz, el is lehet ezeken mélázni, de az egyensúly mintha kissé felborult volna. Valamint van olyan fontos szereplő, akiről egy idő után egyszerűen nem hallunk többet.

This was Card's third horror novel, and it is almost as good as his previous Lost Boys. In this case, the protagonist is a handyman who takes on the renovation of an abandoned house and in the process is forced to confront the supernatural forces which lie within it. Not really remembered after almost twenty years, but I do remember one chilling scene in which arms and hands emerge from a wall, threatening to entrap their victim. Pretty good, eh? As per usual, Card's character development is rich and detailed, and almost seamlessly interwoven with his well paced plot development. Highly recommended.

Card is brilliant.

I love the foreshadowing in this novel. The echoes of Roman and Greek mythology are wonderful. Card is great at dashing your hopes and then using the faintest glimpse of the future to raise them again. What a wonderful ending.

Don't listen to the other reviews, this book was great. Interesting characters, a fun plot and some twists that I never saw coming. I definitely recommend it.

I have always enjoyed Orson Scott Card's forays into the more-or-less real world. While Homebody certainly has its fantastical elements, its setting is modern-day Greensboro, North Carolina, aka my home town. It is always great fun to read a novel set in a place that you know really well, as you can vividly imagine the setting and frequently think "yup, got that one right" when the author references local culture.

Besides the setting, I enjoyed the set-up: Don, a lonely former contractor, having lost his family and most of his savings to a legal battle followed by a tragic accident, takes solace in renovating abandoned houses. The house he chooses is a once-magnificent mansion that has since been cut up into student apartments and finally abandoned all together. As I have dedicated a fair amount of time to fixing up my very old house, I enjoyed the loving descriptions of the house and its construction, as well as Don's renovation work. Since this is an Orson Scott Card book, there is something a bit strange and otherworldly about the house, and soon enough that becomes the focus of the story.

My one complaint about the book is that Don, who was deeply wounded by his ex-wife's treachery and the terrible accident that claimed the lives of both his ex-wife and daughter, falls in love remarkably easily. Early in the book, he begins a physical relationship with the realtor who handles the house sale, and within days of knowing her is talking as if he is in love and responsible for her happiness. Next he allows Sylvie, a squatter who came with the house, to stay. Over a period of a few weeks their relationship develops into something with fondness, but then, he once again makes the leap to love and deep emotional connection with very little notice. At the point where he and Sylvie start to talk all starry-eyed, I thought it was a bit ridiculous. I will say, that by the end of the book, I believed in the relationship and that the conclusion was pretty satisfying. Overall, a fun book!

Call it a ghost story or a gothic romance, one thing is certain about Orson Scott Card's novel, Homebody: it's not science fiction. One of the most celebrated SF authors of the last twenty years, Card has rarely written outside the genre. But his passion for characterization and spirituality make him exceptional in a genre too often obsessed with high-concept plots and technological gimmickry. He is, perhaps, better equipped than most SF writers are to be able to stray from its parameters.

Homebody introduces us to Don Lark. Despite his mellifluous name, Lark carries a terrible burden. A few years back, his alcoholic ex-wife killed herself and their baby daughter in a car crash. By that time the legal fees from their bitter custody battle had already bankrupted his construction company and left him broke. Overwhelmed with grief and rage at the loss of his daughter, he retreats from the world. When he resurfaces, Lark finds a new way to make a living: he buys cheap run-down houses, fixes them up and sells them for a profit.

This lonely nomadic existence seems to suit Lark just fine until he runs into the Bellamy house, an old southern mansion with a past even more tragic than his own. Soon after Lark takes ownership of the Bellamy house, his solitary lifestyle begins to change. He strikes up a romance with real estate agent Cindy Claybourne. He makes friends with his next-door neighbors, a trio of elderly southern matrons. And when he discovers Sylvie, a homeless waif squatting in the house, he allows her to stay while he finishes the renovation.

As Lark continues his work, he begins uncovering clues to the mystery of the house's dark past. What is the secret of the prohibition-age rumrunner's tunnel beneath the basement? When he probes deeper into the puzzle, Sylvie and ladies next-door begin to behave strangely. Who is it that Sylvie speaks to when she is alone? Why do his elderly neighbors implore him to cease his renovation work and tear the house down? Even as forces conspire against him, Lark drives on. His quest to exorcise the ghosts that haunt the Bellamy house paralleling his desire to face his own personal demons and rebuild his life.

Despite the absence of SF conventions, Homebody deals with typical Card themes of family, spirituality, loss, and salvation. Lark is an archetypal Card protagonist: a decent, honest, compassionate man hanged by fate, and struggling to reclaim the peace of a forgotten past. Card's interest in redemption themes sometimes causes his stories to veer toward sentimentality. If that's a problem for you, then Homebody's probably not your book. While Lark's suffering is real and heart wrenching, the novel offers perhaps the least ambivalent conclusion in Card's oeuvre -- some may find it a bit too rosy.

Still, Card's prodigious gifts bubble to the surface. He effortlessly captures the breezy small-town atmosphere of his native Greenboro, and juxtaposes it effectively against the creepy claustrophobia of the Bellamy house. The narrative rushes along breathlessly as Lark peels back the layers concealing the house's tragic secrets. Card skillfully builds the paranoia and suspense, cranking it up to fever pitch during the breathless finalé. Lark emerges as a complex but always sympathetic protagonist. You can't help but be swept up in the scope of his grief and the exhilaration of his spiritual rebirth.

Strange book. More of a spooky romance than a fixer-upper remodeling book. Ghost and Mrs. Muir. With a cold case murder / missing person. Why did Cindy the realtor need so many scenes?

I enjoy houses. Have restored and built several so was delighted to find a story with a house as a main character. Needless to say I enjoyed the book, the characters, and the highlighting of their flaws. Would have liked to have more of the realtor, there was an opportunity for her to come back at the end with the properties history and disposal. Great development of main characters.

Another wonderfully dark supernatural story that manages both to scare the pants off of you slowly throughout the book, but make you fall in love with the characters and their flaws. This one is pretty clear from the get go. A house that is more than just a house. And a man burdened by the loss of his daughter trying to fix his way through every rundown house he can. BUT the story doesn't end like you'd expect and what you thought you knew at the beginning of the book was completely flipped by the end (in a good way). He is a master of understanding how to connect the reader with a character regardless of how much you can actually relate to them. This is probably one of my favorite books by him because it makes you feel SOMETHING. Also has the flavor of Rose Red by Stephen King, so if anyone enjoys houses that have a mind of their own will eat this book up :)

slow burner but worth the read

little slow at first but once story settled in, moved along like a freight train. Interesting character development that took a bit to connect storylines.

Preachy, patronising, even silly at the denouement

I liked the Ender books, especially Speaker for the Dead. Speculative fiction at its finest, dealing with ethical dilemma and complexity with humility and compassion. Fully realised characters I actually gave a damn about. I don't know what happened to Card in Homebody. It was like reading a different author who could only write stereotypical cardboard characters spouting tired platitudes masquerading as morality. Very disappointing.

I wonder why we’re so fascinated by the idea of houses being sentient beings? I know this is not the first book I’ve read where a house has reacted to remodeling and renovation. It’s as if our homes embody who we are or who their previous homeowners were; then become entwined with the living and the dead, until they take on a life of their own. There are several lives (and deaths) involved in this house and this story, and people (both living and dead) are embedded in this old, rambling house the main character (Don Lark) seeks to restore.

While definitely not particularly scary and only mildly suspenseful, the style reads like Stephen King at times (especially when the formal ballroom comes to life a la The Shining for an evening). Unfortunately, Card was not as internally consistent as he should be with the ghost story - I think he was trying a bit too hard to “wow” us with an amazing twist. Dude, I figured it out almost right away and the only questions to be answered were how and why.

Aside from that, it is well-written, compelling, and even though some people might characterize it as slow, I wanted to read this book every night. It pulled me back again and again. I am not a fan of sci-fi, so I haven’t read any of Orson Scott Card’s other books in that genre. I have read the Alvin Maker series and for fans of that (as I am) this book is very different. While there are supernatural elements, the characters in no way have the level of magical knowledge and ability to use it well as in the Alvin Maker series. They are using bare bones skills to try to survive the situation rather than conquering it.

Solitude and loneliness are themes throughout, and as one of the characters says: “So I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself . . . Can’t be done. You can’t please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn’t mean anything if it’s just you. There has to be somebody else it matters to.”

Ultimately “pain and loss and shame and guilt” created the energy of this house and enabled it to trap souls, living or dead, within its walls or nearby. The most interesting conversation occurs when the “Weird Sisters” next door explain how the house became powerful. It did make me reflect on the energies in places and how a beautiful place can be transformed into a prison; as Miss Gladys (with Loretta Devine's voice) says: “Nothing needs beauty so much as ugly do.”

The theme of energy and transformation is carried through the way-better-than-the-first-twist-second-twist ending, showing yet again how the energy of belief and spirit inhabit a space or a body, and can then be transformed into something new . . . or destroyed completely.