“Model Home”

It is the 1980s, and the Ziller family has moved to the Los Angeles area to make it big in real estate—a decision they are destined to regret. Welcome to “Model Home”, Eric Puchner’s debut novel, which depicts a suburban family’s disillusionment with the American dream. Formerly a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Puchner is the author of the short-story collection “Music Through the Floor.” He tells the Zimmer family’s story from multiple points of view, and the effects are believable and wrenching. The San Francisco Chronicle says that the characters “take on flesh and bone through their sharp dialogue and often grimly funny observations.” The New York Times calls the writing “attuned and specific,” and Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “With careful attention to nuanced and fractured perspectives, Puchner teases a fragile beauty out of the loneliness that separates the members of this family.” The Boston Globe says, “‘Model Home’ is about nothing less than the conflicts at the heart of American life: the pursuit of all too-often illusory prosperity and what happens when people in a culture that tells them they make their own fate confront the brutal realities of chance.”