Super Host: the charming, compulsively readable novel of life, love and loneliness

(Paperback)

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Description

Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work. Left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the garden and list his house on a popular rental site.

A stranger in his own home, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.

Wry, rueful and rich in observation, SUPER HOST provides a delicious portrait of middle-age, marriage, and the underlying fears and loneliness that colour so many lives.

Reviews

Exploring identity, creativity and second chances, Russo's midlife drama is wise, tender and surprising * Mail on Sunday *
Brimming with...pure affection * The New York Times Book Review *

Funny, sharp, and artistic...A wonderful book flanked with irony, perversity, Rear Window voyeurism, and women who understand the task of reinvention, Super Host is a case study of what we talk about when we talk about success

* Lit Hub *
In Russo's charming and poignant debut...the author writes with warm sympathy and humour. A treat for fans of Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta * Kirkus *
This is the compulsively readable story of Bennett, a once-famous artist now divorced and impoverished, who lives in his garden studio and spies on his tenants through the windows. Super Host is hilarious, and touching, too; Kate Russo is a terrific storyteller. * Claire Messud *
I gobbled up Super Host, Kate Russo's smart, funny, and surprising first novel. She writes with such a generous and insightful eye about love, loneliness and artistic ambition, and has redrawn the lines that connect people in fiction through the most modern and unlikely of settings, the home share. * Jess Walter *
Kate Russo's debut Super Host is pure delight-smart, fun, poignant, and deeply satisfying. I loved it * Lily King *
Super Host isn't just a charming, compulsively readable, romantically suspenseful novel about a lonely man who gets himself emotionally enmeshed with a series of short-term tenants. Kate Russo's wise and funny debut also has a lot to say about the courage it takes to start over in the middle of your life. It's a joy from start to finish. * Tom Perrotta *

Author Bio

Kate Russo grew up in Maine in the US and now divides her time between there and the UK. She has an M.F.A. in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art and exhibits in both the UK and US.