Open House

Describing the chaotic, polyglot world we live in now, one that disconnects us from the past and from one another, Doty asks,""So where do I live? I don't have an answer, but I've realized there's something I like about not having an answer... Sometimes home is found in unexpected places."" National Book Critics Circle award-winner Doty has gathered 17 writers to consider those unexpected places, among them Andrea Barrett, Carol Muske-Dukes, Mary Morris and Paul Lisicky. For Morris, a sometime travel writer, the answer is the subways beneath New York City's streets. Barbara Hurd writes of caves, of finding herself""squeezed into a cleft in 350-million-year-old limestone...sixty feet under the earth,"" where she experiences a moment of sudden, unexpected intimacy with another caver. Other equally surprising""homes"" are gracefully described in this fine collection.