"Super Host introduces its readers to Bennett, a painter who is renting out his home on a vacation rental service to make ends meet, all while living in his artist studio (a shed in the backyard). Novelist Kate Russo, a painter herself, evokes a grand mixture of pathos and potential—the oil paint and turpentine scents of the artist’s studio, the disappointments and pivots of middle age, and the unexpected mix-and-match social opportunities (some met, and some missed) of the 'sharing economy.' You’ll find a stint with Super Host’s cast of characters to be a gratifying visit, indeed."
Publisher Penguin
Publication Date 2022-04-05
Section New Titles - Paperback / Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Alex M.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780593187722
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart.
Bennett Driscoll has had better days. A Turner Prize-nominated artist, Bennett was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed.
A stranger in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett has trouble finding purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests—lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie—unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.
