What do you think?
Rate this book
Housemates
Two young housemates embark on a road trip to discover themselves in a fractured America in this sparkling novel of love, friendship and chosen family, by the award-winning author of The Third Rainbow Girl.
What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?
When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.
After Bernie's former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.
What ensues is a three-week journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the aritsts into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”—as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to to pursue their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.
Housemates is a warm and insightful coming-of-age story of youth and freedom, a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.
What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?
When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.
After Bernie's former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.
What ensues is a three-week journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the aritsts into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”—as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to to pursue their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.
Housemates is a warm and insightful coming-of-age story of youth and freedom, a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2024
About the author
Emma Copley Eisenberg
8 books376 followersEmma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Housemates, is forthcoming from Hogarth on May 28, 2024. Her first book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia (2020), was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Bouchercon Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction and more. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 431 reviews
January 6, 2024
I wrote this book! I hope you enjoy
June 3, 2024
I have to give this a 5 star rating because it was truly an *experience* reading this book. I mean everything from the physicality of the story (the descriptions of land, food, creating art, peoples' bodies, spaces) that rendered such vivid images on the page to the way I was completely lost in the story immediately. I loved learning about these characters and journeying with them!
Plus, Emma Copley Eisenberg can WRITE. There were so many good passages that I had to underline; thoughts about art, capturing moments, seeing vs creating, being a witness to love and life and terror and so much that we've all felt since 2016 (cannot believe that was 8!!! years ago). I just felt a lot while reading this book, both for these characters and with them.
Good art can be a mirror, a window, or both. And I think many readers will see themselves in this in a myriad of ways, and those who don't will surely find something to enjoy and appreciate about it as well. I surely did!
Plus, Emma Copley Eisenberg can WRITE. There were so many good passages that I had to underline; thoughts about art, capturing moments, seeing vs creating, being a witness to love and life and terror and so much that we've all felt since 2016 (cannot believe that was 8!!! years ago). I just felt a lot while reading this book, both for these characters and with them.
Good art can be a mirror, a window, or both. And I think many readers will see themselves in this in a myriad of ways, and those who don't will surely find something to enjoy and appreciate about it as well. I surely did!
Want to read
June 17, 2024QUEER ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(thanks to the author for the copy)
(thanks to the author for the copy)
May 23, 2024
How do you talk about a book like Housemates, once you’ve finished it?
This is a road trip novel, following two young artists, Leah and Bernie. They meet as housemates, and then leave their town with the intention of documenting what they see, and how it makes them feel.
What I found as I flipped through the pages is that this is a book celebrating being messy and queer and fat. It’s about art—both making and absorbing it. But, impossibly, the author does something else that I found extraordinary. It celebrates being alive, during a time where many of us have forgotten how.
Revitalizing.
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy in exchange for a review!
This is a road trip novel, following two young artists, Leah and Bernie. They meet as housemates, and then leave their town with the intention of documenting what they see, and how it makes them feel.
What I found as I flipped through the pages is that this is a book celebrating being messy and queer and fat. It’s about art—both making and absorbing it. But, impossibly, the author does something else that I found extraordinary. It celebrates being alive, during a time where many of us have forgotten how.
Revitalizing.
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy in exchange for a review!
June 2, 2024
stunning! the way the author pays attention to the physicality of every element of the story was such a treat. From the bodies of her characters, their animals, inanimate objects, and even the landscape itself, you get a really rich, almost tactile experience of the world she created. Book of the summer methinks
June 18, 2024
I wanted to love this so, so bad. Queer love story unpacking the "heart of America" is a blinking sign with my name on it. I eat that up for breakfast.
Instead I was let down on every single one of the pages. Bad writing, I didn't feel immersed or like the story was tactile, instead it was bad poetry. Characters whose personalities are all one note and interchangeable. The "road trip" is a three week journey around Pennsylvania that takes up way too little of the book. Who the hell is the third person narrator and why are they also a terrible first person narrator. And the story was not easy to get through! It plodded along at a strange pace, lingering indiscriminately on small moments and brushing over the interesting or complicated.
I figured that not being generous with my rating might alert other readers who are as excited as I was to reading this, as a warning that they were about to read something that is bordering on not good.
Instead I was let down on every single one of the pages. Bad writing, I didn't feel immersed or like the story was tactile, instead it was bad poetry. Characters whose personalities are all one note and interchangeable. The "road trip" is a three week journey around Pennsylvania that takes up way too little of the book. Who the hell is the third person narrator and why are they also a terrible first person narrator. And the story was not easy to get through! It plodded along at a strange pace, lingering indiscriminately on small moments and brushing over the interesting or complicated.
I figured that not being generous with my rating might alert other readers who are as excited as I was to reading this, as a warning that they were about to read something that is bordering on not good.
May 12, 2024
Oh did I enjoy this book so much. This is the type of literary fiction novel I devour. Leah (writer) and Bernie (photographer) are on a road trip capturing rural Pennsylvania. Every moment of this book I felt like I was there with them. The details are so well done and not overly descriptive. It truly felt like I was watching a movie-that’s the best way I can describe it.
It was a melancholy read for me which I tend to really like — it’s the same feeling I had reading Normal People which is one of my favorite books. (It also does not use quotations, like that book which doesn’t bother me but I know can be an issue for some).
It celebrates life, love, queerness, bodies and art. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking and all the emotions in between.
The only issue I had was trying to tie together the narrator and their connection / story to the greater plot. It was an interesting POV but I wasn’t entirely sure why we were hearing it through them, however it didn’t necessarily take anything away from the story.
Thank you NetGalley & Hogarth publishing for the e-ARC!
It was a melancholy read for me which I tend to really like — it’s the same feeling I had reading Normal People which is one of my favorite books. (It also does not use quotations, like that book which doesn’t bother me but I know can be an issue for some).
It celebrates life, love, queerness, bodies and art. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking and all the emotions in between.
The only issue I had was trying to tie together the narrator and their connection / story to the greater plot. It was an interesting POV but I wasn’t entirely sure why we were hearing it through them, however it didn’t necessarily take anything away from the story.
Thank you NetGalley & Hogarth publishing for the e-ARC!
June 19, 2024
I liked the book but didn’t love it as much as I was expecting to. My main complaint would be the narrator - I don’t think it added a lot of value to the story and, if anything, it took away from the story for me at some points. Perhaps it would have been better if the book just started with the narrator’s perspective and ended with her attending their gallery or taking their photo or something, but having her be there omnisciently in the house “through the cracks of the bricks” or on the road trip with them felt a little weird. It also seemed like there was too much going on in the book at times and to me the passage of time or pacing at the end of the book felt a little off. I think I would have enjoyed it more if there was more road trip and less of everything else. I also really don’t like when the author said things like the “photo sharing app” or the “everything website” instead of instagram/amazon, or took time to explain song lyrics or the plot of a movie instead of just giving us the title. Reading other people’s reviews, it sounds like there were some interesting stylistic and structural choices in the writing (like not using quotation marks), which would have dropped my rating even more had I read the physical book and not listened to this on audio book, as I find that style very challenging to read. Overall, it was still a pretty good book and I appreciated how topical it was and the queer representation.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2024
some of the most insufferable prose i’ve read in a minute. also, i would love to know why some authors feel the need to write without quotation marks. it’s not a quirky or fun stylistic choice, it’s just annoying.
May 13, 2024
4.75 Stars
What a beautiful book! This was so honest, artsy, thoughtful, and moving.
Bernie is a photographer who hasn't taken any pictures in a while. She recently learned that her photography mentor who taught her everything she knows had been preying on some of his young female students. She's not sure how to feel about this. Bernie moves in to a house with 4 other queer people in Philadelphia, one of them being Leah, who Bernie feels instantly curious about, but Leah is dating Alex- another housemate.
When Bernie learns that her photography mentor has left her his negatives and cameras in his will, Bernie and Leah decide to take a road trip together. It's perfect timing for Leah, because they are a writer and have just received a grant, but they have also been feeling uninspired and want a collaborator. They love Bernie's photography and it seems like the perfect project.
Everything in this book from the physical descriptions to the character development is written with an almost brutal honesty. The people are all flawed, and some- like the photography mentor- have quite big flaws. But no judgment is given by the author, she leaves everything up to the reader.
I loved just how ARTSY this was. The way Bernie talks about her photography, how she chooses what to shoot, how she sets everything up. The way Leah takes notes on a physical notepad, the questions they ask, and the way Leah and Bernie relate to each other was so interesting to me.
I also loved the internal philosophizing that Bernie and Leah do during the road trip. In particular, how they think through the situation with Bernie's mentor:
There is romance and sex in this too, but it's not really a romance novel (genre wise). The characters care for each other, but they also mistreat each other, and (like everything else) the author presents everything to the reader without passing judgment.
There is also a narrator who occasionally makes an appearance. If I'm being picky, I found the narrator to be kind of unnecessary, and the ending felt a bit weak to me, especially compared to the rest of the book.
But overall, this was very enjoyable to read.
What a beautiful book! This was so honest, artsy, thoughtful, and moving.
Bernie is a photographer who hasn't taken any pictures in a while. She recently learned that her photography mentor who taught her everything she knows had been preying on some of his young female students. She's not sure how to feel about this. Bernie moves in to a house with 4 other queer people in Philadelphia, one of them being Leah, who Bernie feels instantly curious about, but Leah is dating Alex- another housemate.
When Bernie learns that her photography mentor has left her his negatives and cameras in his will, Bernie and Leah decide to take a road trip together. It's perfect timing for Leah, because they are a writer and have just received a grant, but they have also been feeling uninspired and want a collaborator. They love Bernie's photography and it seems like the perfect project.
Everything in this book from the physical descriptions to the character development is written with an almost brutal honesty. The people are all flawed, and some- like the photography mentor- have quite big flaws. But no judgment is given by the author, she leaves everything up to the reader.
I loved just how ARTSY this was. The way Bernie talks about her photography, how she chooses what to shoot, how she sets everything up. The way Leah takes notes on a physical notepad, the questions they ask, and the way Leah and Bernie relate to each other was so interesting to me.
Better? Leah asked, when they were standing in it.
Yes, Bernie said.
Why?
I'm not sure.
Try would you?
I guess because the parking lot, the asphalt, is most of the picture now. It feels more open, more free, more spacious. More like their party would have felt, maybe.
Leah did not understand this, but she wrote it down.
I also loved the internal philosophizing that Bernie and Leah do during the road trip. In particular, how they think through the situation with Bernie's mentor:
"How was it possible that men whose blood and energy could pool in such dark places, who could touch and drink and talk with such disregard and impunity, who said things that could fester in the mind for a whole life, could also make things that were so blindingly beautiful and true? Did their ability to make these things stem from the same source as their ability to ruin? Were these things connected? Were they opposed? Unrelated?"
There is romance and sex in this too, but it's not really a romance novel (genre wise). The characters care for each other, but they also mistreat each other, and (like everything else) the author presents everything to the reader without passing judgment.
There is also a narrator who occasionally makes an appearance. If I'm being picky, I found the narrator to be kind of unnecessary, and the ending felt a bit weak to me, especially compared to the rest of the book.
But overall, this was very enjoyable to read.
June 13, 2024
loved this. this is one of the most immersive reading experiences i’ve had in a while, and the storytelling was wholly unique. if you like quieter books that make you think about the world in new ways, housemates needs to be on your radar!
May 28, 2024
I didn’t like it. Both overwritten and, in its overwrittenness, vague. So often flowery physical descriptions were given instead of concrete information about the characters. Halfway through the book I felt like I knew very little about any of them, and therefore cared little. The books journey toward Capital-T Truth felt hollow. I also found its description of queer people and attempted use of current events to be kind of clumsy.
Very Contemporary Novel (trademark) — putting kind of a flimsy love story up against all of the horrific things (economic, social, fascism) that make up modern life. My problem with this type of book is the characters are “motivated” primarily by malaise, maybe sex if that. It just feels lifeless, and thus its evocation of police brutality, or empire, or transphobia feels like a cheap dance for the attention of the main audience for these books— self-conscious progressives with little to say.
Very Contemporary Novel (trademark) — putting kind of a flimsy love story up against all of the horrific things (economic, social, fascism) that make up modern life. My problem with this type of book is the characters are “motivated” primarily by malaise, maybe sex if that. It just feels lifeless, and thus its evocation of police brutality, or empire, or transphobia feels like a cheap dance for the attention of the main audience for these books— self-conscious progressives with little to say.
May 24, 2024
4.25 / such a lovely queer road trip novel about all kinds of love and art!! In love with both the narrative and characters in this.
June 28, 2024
Housemates is a 'once in a lifetime' kind of book. A contemporary, queer triumph. It has everything you could ever want in a book. It's gay, it’s messy, there's found family, there's finding yourself, a celebration of our bodies and what it means to really live in them, a road trip, the meaning of art, the creation of art, failures and successes. All of this is woven together in a brilliant and thoughtful way. It is unlike anything I have ever read before and it will be in my heart forever. I will be thinking about Bernie and Leah for the rest of my life. I loved these characters, I loved their story. Housemates felt like home while I was reading it. This is one you're absolutely going to want to read.
Thank you to Hogarth Books for the eARC on NetGalley. I would also like to thank THE Emma Copley Eisenberg for getting a physical copy in my hands.
Thank you to Hogarth Books for the eARC on NetGalley. I would also like to thank THE Emma Copley Eisenberg for getting a physical copy in my hands.
July 15, 2024
It is courageous to write a new novel based upon people in history, not only because you might well get them so very wrong, but also because there are readers, like me, who will almost always refuse to even skim the pages. With Housemates, I didn’t know there was this “taken from real life” element, nor for that matter was I familiar with the lesbian couple of the 1930s onward who inspired the author, and whom she reimagined and reconfigured as the contemporary queer couple her story revolves around. As it turned out, easily my favourite thing about this book was learning about the women who inspired it.
Housemates focuses on a young woman named Bernie, loosely based on Bernice Abbott, a news and social justice photographer who lived from 1898-1991. Bernice Abbott’s real life partner, art critic and writer Elizabeth McCausland, is recreated as the character Leah, one of many queer housemates living together in west Philly. That’s easy enough to glom onto, but hell if I know who the novel’s elderly all-watching narrator is meant to be. I’m going to let that rest. I had simply read that the plot centered around a “queer roadtrip”. Sign me up, I thought, rummaging around for road maps, unaware that no one was going anywhere for at least the first third of the book.
That said, I liked the opening, seen from the pov of introverted Bernie being interviewed as a prospective tenant for a room that’s opened up in a large shared home. I wasn’t entirely sure if the group of women/enby housemates speaking with Bernie were meant to be taken seriously - a couple of them came across as almost caricatures of 2020 queer culture, self serious and openly judgmental - but I quickly warmed to one potential roomie-down-the-hall, Leah, a nonbinary newspaper writer vacillating between appealing self confidence and relatable insecurities. She is smart, but stuck in her work. She’s in a relationship, or/. She is generally content with her larger body, but stung by the way she’s sometimes addressed - or ignored, due to her size.
I also liked the early portions of the novel dedicated to Bernie’s burgeoning friendship with an unlikely guy, a photography teacher whose work has been lauded, but is known as something of a lech. Or, as things evolve, worse than that. But Holy Gods does this tale take forever to get a move on. For endless pages before the promised car journey, the writing is already rife with potholes, stops and starts, endless detours. Relationship issues that aren’t compelling, roommate drama that fizzes out, somehow both too much and not enough of the sexually abusive professor; initially he’s believable, if not particularly likable, but soon enough he’s a cliche. There is. So much. Political posturing. I almost gave up during a side track to an imagined meeting with Valerie Solanas, real life author of Scum Manifesto (Scum=Society For Cutting up Men), the woman who shot Andy Warhol in 1968. (Still though, imagining Valarie Solanas conducting a haunted house tour? That’s half a star right there).
Finally finally - and completely bizarrely, suddenly funded for no real reason by the Philadelphia newspaper Leah works for - Bernie and Leah get in the car. The road trip from Philly turns out to be only to visit a few Pennsylvania small towns. Not necessarily a bad thing, but by the time they loaded up Bernie’s (pleasingly antiquated) photography gear and got going, I couldn’t help hoping for new backdrops. The queer writer-photographer duo take on Maine, Mississippi or Wyoming. Ideally a trip through more than one state. Alas. Not to be, though I was somewhat assuaged by a turn in the plot that expands on the photography teacher’s early critical success.
Ultimately, I was disappointed in how much of Housemates had nothing to do with experiencing life on the road, seeing new places, meeting new people. Worse still, I went half up a wall with the endless listing of facts, the dry retelling of queer history. I don’t like feeling preached to, even by folks whose beliefs I agree with. There are so many more vibrant, alive ways to incorporate real events into fiction. Seeing that Housemates has hit a couple of best seller lists, indie and national, I felt this twisted mix of yay-go-lesbians and F*CK, what about queer novels that are living and breathing and funny and heartbreaking and not just proselytizing?? I’ll take Rubyfruit Jungle for 200, Alex. Or let’s just say thank the Gods and Goddesses for Emily Austin, and leave it at that.
Note: The people complaining about the lack of quotation marks apparently don’t read British fiction but
- I actually prefer it.
Also. Why didn’t I quit after this:
“Leah massaged the sweet skin of Jigger’s primordial pouch”
(Jigger is a cat, if you were wondering, and now I’m finally out of here.)
Housemates focuses on a young woman named Bernie, loosely based on Bernice Abbott, a news and social justice photographer who lived from 1898-1991. Bernice Abbott’s real life partner, art critic and writer Elizabeth McCausland, is recreated as the character Leah, one of many queer housemates living together in west Philly. That’s easy enough to glom onto, but hell if I know who the novel’s elderly all-watching narrator is meant to be. I’m going to let that rest. I had simply read that the plot centered around a “queer roadtrip”. Sign me up, I thought, rummaging around for road maps, unaware that no one was going anywhere for at least the first third of the book.
That said, I liked the opening, seen from the pov of introverted Bernie being interviewed as a prospective tenant for a room that’s opened up in a large shared home. I wasn’t entirely sure if the group of women/enby housemates speaking with Bernie were meant to be taken seriously - a couple of them came across as almost caricatures of 2020 queer culture, self serious and openly judgmental - but I quickly warmed to one potential roomie-down-the-hall, Leah, a nonbinary newspaper writer vacillating between appealing self confidence and relatable insecurities. She is smart, but stuck in her work. She’s in a relationship, or/. She is generally content with her larger body, but stung by the way she’s sometimes addressed - or ignored, due to her size.
I also liked the early portions of the novel dedicated to Bernie’s burgeoning friendship with an unlikely guy, a photography teacher whose work has been lauded, but is known as something of a lech. Or, as things evolve, worse than that. But Holy Gods does this tale take forever to get a move on. For endless pages before the promised car journey, the writing is already rife with potholes, stops and starts, endless detours. Relationship issues that aren’t compelling, roommate drama that fizzes out, somehow both too much and not enough of the sexually abusive professor; initially he’s believable, if not particularly likable, but soon enough he’s a cliche. There is. So much. Political posturing. I almost gave up during a side track to an imagined meeting with Valerie Solanas, real life author of Scum Manifesto (Scum=Society For Cutting up Men), the woman who shot Andy Warhol in 1968. (Still though, imagining Valarie Solanas conducting a haunted house tour? That’s half a star right there).
Finally finally - and completely bizarrely, suddenly funded for no real reason by the Philadelphia newspaper Leah works for - Bernie and Leah get in the car. The road trip from Philly turns out to be only to visit a few Pennsylvania small towns. Not necessarily a bad thing, but by the time they loaded up Bernie’s (pleasingly antiquated) photography gear and got going, I couldn’t help hoping for new backdrops. The queer writer-photographer duo take on Maine, Mississippi or Wyoming. Ideally a trip through more than one state. Alas. Not to be, though I was somewhat assuaged by a turn in the plot that expands on the photography teacher’s early critical success.
Ultimately, I was disappointed in how much of Housemates had nothing to do with experiencing life on the road, seeing new places, meeting new people. Worse still, I went half up a wall with the endless listing of facts, the dry retelling of queer history. I don’t like feeling preached to, even by folks whose beliefs I agree with. There are so many more vibrant, alive ways to incorporate real events into fiction. Seeing that Housemates has hit a couple of best seller lists, indie and national, I felt this twisted mix of yay-go-lesbians and F*CK, what about queer novels that are living and breathing and funny and heartbreaking and not just proselytizing?? I’ll take Rubyfruit Jungle for 200, Alex. Or let’s just say thank the Gods and Goddesses for Emily Austin, and leave it at that.
Note: The people complaining about the lack of quotation marks apparently don’t read British fiction but
- I actually prefer it.
Also. Why didn’t I quit after this:
“Leah massaged the sweet skin of Jigger’s primordial pouch”
(Jigger is a cat, if you were wondering, and now I’m finally out of here.)
June 12, 2024
This definitely was not what I was expecting, but I had fun with it regardless. The writing felt vivid and poignant in the moment, but I am unsure if I will remember much of it in the long run (but that could just be a me problem). I loved the nuanced discussions of absolutely every topic imaginable (it feels so genuinely mid-20s to know a little too much about everything and nothing). Also, I am always a sucker for a road trip aesthetic, so this was a solid novel in my eyes.
Read
July 1, 2024dnf
May 14, 2024
"There was nothing to changing your life, it turned out. You just put a toe in and fell."
Tender, fully realized, beautiful. Copley Eisenberg creates a pair of wondrous characters that leap off the page, and so many sentences and passages completely took my breath away. I love love love Bernie and Leah and the depiction and focus on the intensity of their artmaking made me rethink so much of my own practice.
I loved this book and am so honored to have read it early. Will be shouting this out as the queer book of the summer on TikTok. Thank you to ECE for sending me an early copy, knowing that it would move me. What a talent.
Tender, fully realized, beautiful. Copley Eisenberg creates a pair of wondrous characters that leap off the page, and so many sentences and passages completely took my breath away. I love love love Bernie and Leah and the depiction and focus on the intensity of their artmaking made me rethink so much of my own practice.
I loved this book and am so honored to have read it early. Will be shouting this out as the queer book of the summer on TikTok. Thank you to ECE for sending me an early copy, knowing that it would move me. What a talent.
April 7, 2024
guys I’m not even going to tell you to read this bc it is so clear to me that absolutely everyone will be reading it in a few months (deservedly!!!)
June 3, 2024
A photograph doesn’t feel how life feels, it turns out, no matter how hard I tried. There’s nothing in living that gets caught like that and doesn’t change, that becomes a place to come back to, again and again, and that hurts, forever. Though there may be something in dying that’s like that. It’s freaky what we do with cameras, if you really think about it. A kind of loving murder.
Housemates is, on the surface, a road trip novel in which Bernie (a photographer) and Leah (a writer) set out to document life in rural Pennsylvania. But it’s so much more than that. This is a celebratory book, a novel that celebrates art (both the act of creating it and the act of absorbing it), friendship, queerness, and what it means to be alive (and finding joy in being alive) during a politically and socially fraught time in American history. It reads like a love letter: to Pennsylvania, to youth, to the human body, to falling in love – with yourself, with someone else, and with life itself. It’s about being messy and imperfect and helpful and hurtful – about how it feels to be seen and understood, and how it feels to be misunderstood. It’s a truly special book.
Emma Copley Eisenberg has created such incredible characters in Bernie and Leah, who are written with so much texture and tenderness that you can feel Eisenberg’s love for them emanating from the page. Their desires and insecurities, their regrets and their secrets, are so deeply felt in the narrative. They are complex and flawed and real. The people they interact with on their road trip are fascinating, subverting expectations at every opportunity as Eisenberg delves into the soul of Pennsylvania, a place she describes as having “two hearts.” Through Bernie’s mentor, a photographer and professor accused of inappropriate conduct with his female students, Eisenberg raises thoughtful questions surrounding whether or not an artist can ever truly be separated from their art.
But what’s truly wondrous about Housemates is Eisenberg’s lively, richly-detailed writing, which immersed me completely in the world of the novel. Her descriptions of Bernie’s photographs are vivid and evocative and created such a clear, striking picture in my mind. Surely it couldn’t have been an easy task to write a book about a visual art form – but Eisenberg totally nailed it. I don’t know if I’ve ever read writing quite like hers, and I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next.
4.5 stars instead of 5, only because I’m not certain the narrator's POV, while certainly interesting, was necessary, and the ending felt a bit flat compared to the rest of the book. Otherwise, Housemates was a near-flawless, unforgettable reading experience. Thank you to Hogarth for the early reading opportunity.
July 13, 2024
“housemates” is a great example of “all vibes, no plot” and if you don’t mind that you just might enjoy this book. unfortunately for me that is the very last thing I’d want from a road trip novel. the trip itself took a while to set up (the first 30%) which made being bored during even more of a let down.
for a story centered around bernie and leah’s relationship, the author really sacrificed their character development by spending so much time on secondary characters like the narrator and daniel dunn. I couldn’t tell you how or why leah and bernie fell in love, but I remember several flashbacks from a nameless outsider who felt detached from the book the entire time. on a similar vein, “housemates” promises messy housemate dynamics but whenever conflict arose between them it wrapped up so quickly it almost didn’t feel worth mentioning.
despite the overly descriptive narrative I was still struggling to differentiate between bernie and leah halfway in because they felt so similar. I didn’t feel like I knew anything about either MC outside of their body types and art mediums. interestingly enough this author has some great pieces about fat characters in fiction (unrelated to her book) and yet this fat representation wasn’t anything to write home about.
last thing re: characterization - I think the blm protest mentions and free palestine meme posting were attempts to give leah some identity but it came off as cringey/pandering more than anything else. bernie’s moment about being american had a similar effect because it was just as fleeting.
this was a fun idea that lost direction along the way. thanks to netgalley and random house for the advanced copy. all opinions are my own.
for a story centered around bernie and leah’s relationship, the author really sacrificed their character development by spending so much time on secondary characters like the narrator and daniel dunn. I couldn’t tell you how or why leah and bernie fell in love, but I remember several flashbacks from a nameless outsider who felt detached from the book the entire time. on a similar vein, “housemates” promises messy housemate dynamics but whenever conflict arose between them it wrapped up so quickly it almost didn’t feel worth mentioning.
despite the overly descriptive narrative I was still struggling to differentiate between bernie and leah halfway in because they felt so similar. I didn’t feel like I knew anything about either MC outside of their body types and art mediums. interestingly enough this author has some great pieces about fat characters in fiction (unrelated to her book) and yet this fat representation wasn’t anything to write home about.
last thing re: characterization - I think the blm protest mentions and free palestine meme posting were attempts to give leah some identity but it came off as cringey/pandering more than anything else. bernie’s moment about being american had a similar effect because it was just as fleeting.
this was a fun idea that lost direction along the way. thanks to netgalley and random house for the advanced copy. all opinions are my own.
May 28, 2024
thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the advanced digital arc of this one.
this one is out today.
--
this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, but i'm dnfing at 54% in.
unfortunately, it was a letdown for me and i tried, i really tried, including waiting for release day to see if consuming this on audiobook would help.
here were my issues:
1. the writing. there are no quotation marks. none. this style makes for a very confusing read for me, personally. i also felt like the writing felt very much like i was reading a technical paper written in school.
2. how weight/fatness was written about. more writing issues included the very strange way that fatness was written about. here's an actual quote: "But there was Leah's hand. Small nails, rounded pudgy fingers with little pockets of luxurious fat stuffed under the skin between the joints." as a person who is fat, i'm certainly okay with acknowledging weights of characters, but this writing felt fetishistic to me, almost?
3. i dnfed about 54% in when there was this line: "Leah had spent more than one hour of her life googling "Emily Ratajkowski breasts" and masturbating to the results." literally, what in the fuck is this. emily ratajkowski is a real person. why would you write this?
4. for a "queer road trip book" the actual roadtrip doesn't start until a good 30% of the way in. at that point in the story, there was a side plot about a disgraced photographer that served as a mentor to one of the main characters, but i felt extremely icky reading this as the reason he was canceled was because he was preying sexually on his students. and yet his chapters felt weirdly romanticized with part of the roadtrip including a jaunt to a cabin where he'd left the bulk of his life's work to one of the main characters.
5. even despite all of this, i felt extremely disconnected from all the characters and it felt next to impossible to be engaged. big disappointment for me.
this one is out today.
--
this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, but i'm dnfing at 54% in.
unfortunately, it was a letdown for me and i tried, i really tried, including waiting for release day to see if consuming this on audiobook would help.
here were my issues:
1. the writing. there are no quotation marks. none. this style makes for a very confusing read for me, personally. i also felt like the writing felt very much like i was reading a technical paper written in school.
2. how weight/fatness was written about. more writing issues included the very strange way that fatness was written about. here's an actual quote: "But there was Leah's hand. Small nails, rounded pudgy fingers with little pockets of luxurious fat stuffed under the skin between the joints." as a person who is fat, i'm certainly okay with acknowledging weights of characters, but this writing felt fetishistic to me, almost?
3. i dnfed about 54% in when there was this line: "Leah had spent more than one hour of her life googling "Emily Ratajkowski breasts" and masturbating to the results." literally, what in the fuck is this. emily ratajkowski is a real person. why would you write this?
4. for a "queer road trip book" the actual roadtrip doesn't start until a good 30% of the way in. at that point in the story, there was a side plot about a disgraced photographer that served as a mentor to one of the main characters, but i felt extremely icky reading this as the reason he was canceled was because he was preying sexually on his students. and yet his chapters felt weirdly romanticized with part of the roadtrip including a jaunt to a cabin where he'd left the bulk of his life's work to one of the main characters.
5. even despite all of this, i felt extremely disconnected from all the characters and it felt next to impossible to be engaged. big disappointment for me.
July 11, 2024
4 ⭐️
I just spent my work lunch break devouring the last 30 pages of Housemates.
I was initially intrigued to buy this book after seeing multiple reviews by folks I trust in the #booktok universe (like @celineksreads for one).
Not only is the setting in Philadelphia (and other parts of Pennsylvania), which I am only 30 mins away from, but it's a beautiful celebration of queer life, art, and love.
Bernie and Leah's journey across Pennsylvania to combine Bernie's photography with Leah's written words was literally life-changing for both of them and their housemates back home.
I especially felt seen with the themes around Leah and their body, and I really appreciate how "fat" is showcased not as a bad word, but as a valued part of a person's identity.
I'm walking away from this book feeling like I know the characters as if they are real people in my life.
Kudos to the author for bringing this book to life and sharing perspectives that need to be shared.
I just spent my work lunch break devouring the last 30 pages of Housemates.
I was initially intrigued to buy this book after seeing multiple reviews by folks I trust in the #booktok universe (like @celineksreads for one).
Not only is the setting in Philadelphia (and other parts of Pennsylvania), which I am only 30 mins away from, but it's a beautiful celebration of queer life, art, and love.
Bernie and Leah's journey across Pennsylvania to combine Bernie's photography with Leah's written words was literally life-changing for both of them and their housemates back home.
I especially felt seen with the themes around Leah and their body, and I really appreciate how "fat" is showcased not as a bad word, but as a valued part of a person's identity.
I'm walking away from this book feeling like I know the characters as if they are real people in my life.
Kudos to the author for bringing this book to life and sharing perspectives that need to be shared.
July 5, 2024
The narrator…. Just why…. Also I could not keep any of the characters straight because they were all so one-dimensional, including the two main characters. By the end I was still asking myself, which one is Leah? Which one is Bernie? And the answer was: it literally didn’t matter. But some interesting themes and scenes, maybe would have been better as short stories.
Read
April 2, 2024review to come! thank you to the publisher for the gifted arc 🫶🏻
June 12, 2024
2.75 and I’m not happy about it okay?? I am disappointed to report that this one was a bit overhyped for me. On paper, this has every component I would love (e.g., queerness, art, adventure). I thought it had a slow start, but it continued to fall a bit flat for me and felt quite surface level throughout. Although the representation is important and was endearing, I found the connections throughout the book hard to believe. The anonymous narrator, for me, was a distracting choice and didn’t feel cohesive to the story. 💔 perhaps the audiobook affected my rating? Not sure.
June 24, 2024
This was simultaneously too much and not enough.
If this was JUST about Bernie and Leah and the road trip I would have enjoyed it much more.
I did enjoy the descriptive and raw descriptions of queer bodies, but it did go overboard at times. I also did connect with the depiction of being and artist and producing art.
Don’t even get me started on the weird omniscient narrator - who are you? Why are you here? Go away!
If this was JUST about Bernie and Leah and the road trip I would have enjoyed it much more.
I did enjoy the descriptive and raw descriptions of queer bodies, but it did go overboard at times. I also did connect with the depiction of being and artist and producing art.
Don’t even get me started on the weird omniscient narrator - who are you? Why are you here? Go away!
March 15, 2024
Very raw and impressive, the entirety of the book felt genuine. I didn’t know about Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland and their Changing New York series before reading it, but Housemates was firmly planted around 2016. The omnipresent narrator didn’t quite work for me and I’m not sure if it was meant to echo the real people who inspired the story, but it didn’t add enough to be worth it. Parts were overwhelming and it seemed like nearly every possible issue had to be addressed, but the overall story was subtle and I think it’s the type of book that can linger and the more you think about it, the more it grows. I appreciated how large the cast of characters was while still managing to make them seem unique and real. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading it.
April 20, 2024
3.5⭐️
Thanks Netgalley for the arc! I enjoyed this story, but did not fully resonate with the author’s writing style. It was very hard to get through the middle for me. I also enjoyed the narration, but I thought it could’ve been expanded on why the voice was through that character! It all wrapped up really quickly for me, and I wanted more!
Thanks Netgalley for the arc! I enjoyed this story, but did not fully resonate with the author’s writing style. It was very hard to get through the middle for me. I also enjoyed the narration, but I thought it could’ve been expanded on why the voice was through that character! It all wrapped up really quickly for me, and I wanted more!
July 25, 2024
This book nestled itself into a tender little space in my heart and I truly loved it so much.
Housemates starts from the perspective of an older woman stuck in her overwhelming grief, even though it’s been years since her ‘housemate’ has passed away. One day, she braves the outside world and encounters two young people at a coffee shop discussing ambitious plans for a roadtrip: Bernie and Leah. The woman follows them home and becomes an omniscient third-person onlooker in their lives, as she seems to float out of her body and into their home. We learn about how Bernie and Leah met, we meet their group of young, queer roommates who all share the same house, we see that Bernie is a photographer and Leah is a journalist, and then we watch as Bernie and Leah set out on a road trip through rural Pennsylvania to document this deeply divided state in the early years of the Trump era.
This book gives space to those beautifully mundane moments that feel like they mean nothing in everyday life: the pauses in conversation, the forgotten decor on the shelves of an old bar, the sound of your roommate talking to the cat through the bedroom wall, not the reading of a poem but the first time you’re reminded of it after the fact, when something passing out the train window reminds you of your favourite line. It’s observant and gentle and captures people as they are; ever-changing, making mistakes, learning about themselves. The fact that we’re seeing through the eyes of an older queer woman watching and admiring the lives of those younger than her adds to this feeling of celebration and awe, as she yearns for what her life could have been if her and her ‘housemate’ were able to live as more than just that. All the young housemates in this novel are more than just that: they’re found family and close friends and lovers, with endless care for one another that they’re able to express openly and unreservedly.
That was the exact kind of book I wanted to read on a hot, lazy evening: one that moved slowly and thoughtfully, pausing on the details, giving space to the spaces in between. If we tend to have a similar taste in books, I’m confident you’ll love this <3
Housemates starts from the perspective of an older woman stuck in her overwhelming grief, even though it’s been years since her ‘housemate’ has passed away. One day, she braves the outside world and encounters two young people at a coffee shop discussing ambitious plans for a roadtrip: Bernie and Leah. The woman follows them home and becomes an omniscient third-person onlooker in their lives, as she seems to float out of her body and into their home. We learn about how Bernie and Leah met, we meet their group of young, queer roommates who all share the same house, we see that Bernie is a photographer and Leah is a journalist, and then we watch as Bernie and Leah set out on a road trip through rural Pennsylvania to document this deeply divided state in the early years of the Trump era.
This book gives space to those beautifully mundane moments that feel like they mean nothing in everyday life: the pauses in conversation, the forgotten decor on the shelves of an old bar, the sound of your roommate talking to the cat through the bedroom wall, not the reading of a poem but the first time you’re reminded of it after the fact, when something passing out the train window reminds you of your favourite line. It’s observant and gentle and captures people as they are; ever-changing, making mistakes, learning about themselves. The fact that we’re seeing through the eyes of an older queer woman watching and admiring the lives of those younger than her adds to this feeling of celebration and awe, as she yearns for what her life could have been if her and her ‘housemate’ were able to live as more than just that. All the young housemates in this novel are more than just that: they’re found family and close friends and lovers, with endless care for one another that they’re able to express openly and unreservedly.
That was the exact kind of book I wanted to read on a hot, lazy evening: one that moved slowly and thoughtfully, pausing on the details, giving space to the spaces in between. If we tend to have a similar taste in books, I’m confident you’ll love this <3
Displaying 1 - 30 of 431 reviews