Model Home: A Novel

Eric Puchner

Feb 2010 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Warren Ziller moved his family to Southern California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of the 1980s. But the Zillers’ American dream is about to be rudely interrupted. Warren has squandered their savings on a bad real estate investment, which he conceals from his wife, Camille, who misreads his secrecy as a sign of an affair. Their children, Dustin, Lyle, and Jonas, have grown as distant as satellites, too busy with their own betrayals and rebellions to notice their parents’ distress. When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move to Warren’s abandoned housing development in the desert. In this comically bleak new home, each must reckon with what’s led them there and who’s to blame—and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together.

With penetrating insights into modern life and an uncanny eye for everyday absurdities, Eric Puchner delivers a wildly funny, heartbreaking, and thoroughly original portrait of an American family.

Ratings and reviews

This novel makes you want to feel sorry for each character in a different way while laughing out aloud at each of their awkward flaws. Never a dull moment in this spectacular novel.

About the author

Eric Puchner is the author of the collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the California Book Award and the NYPL Young Lions of Fiction Award, and of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize. Eric is a former Stegner Fellow, a Pushcart Prize winner and winner of an award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories, Zoetrope, Best American Non-Required Reading, Tin House, and Granta. His personal essays appear regularly in GQ, Medium, and elsewhere. Eric is a professor in the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.