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### Amazon.com Review This romantic ghost story relies on a familiar horror backbone: a stranger with a tragic past moves into an old house that also has a tragic past, and is forced to reckon with the supernatural forces that dwell there. In *Homebody*, the stranger is an itinerant architect-builder who makes a lonely living by purchasing fixer-uppers, renovating them, and selling them. The house he buys in Greensboro, North Carolina, (where Orson Scott Card lives, in real life) has three mysteries attached to it: a tunnel in the basement, an attractive female squatter who refuses to leave, and a trio of weird doomsayers who live next door. Card has a clear, well-honed writing style, full of human warmth--a style that is especially effective in the development of the central character, and in details of tools and techniques for renovating an old house. His approach to murder, danger, and threatening forces is so free of closeness or oppression that one might call it "anti-gothic." In an interview, he said, "I am completely uninterested in exploring evil. Evil (and weak and wicked) people are all evil (or weak, or wicked) in the same boring ways. But good people are infinitely interesting in the ways they manage to be good despite all the awful circumstances of their lives." *Homebody* is a pleasant tale about the triumph of love over evil, with a couple of bizarre twists to give it spice. (Hint: don't read the Kirkus Review if you want to keep the plot a surprise.) *--Fiona Webster* ### From Publishers Weekly Like its haunted-house centerpiece, Card's third dark fantasy novel (after The Lost Boys and Treasure Box) has great potential that shines through its superfluous detail. The Bellamy mansion is a venerable Victorian pile that has seen better days when it catches the eye of Don Lark, a widower who "turns his loneliness and grief into the restoration of beautiful old houses." Don's labors to restore the mansion to its former grandeur introduce him to a succession of women receptive to his emotional needs, including an amorous real estate agent, three dotty elderly neighbors who urge him to demolish the place and Sylvie Delaney, a squatter who has lived in the house secretly for a decade. All have been drawn to the mansion and its legacy of corrupted splendor through the shame of their private lives?and one turns out to be ghost whose past troubles are a touchstone for analogies between Don's home improvements and the need to rebuild dignity and character. Card's imaginative use of the haunted-house theme to explore the haunting power of guilt and remorse is deflated by facile observations on the theological significance of human suffering. All of his characters are sensitive studies of the crippling effects of emotional trauma, but several serve no purpose other than to speed the sometimes sluggish plot along with timely advice and miraculous feats of magic. These shortcomings aside, the novel is a powerful tale of healing and redemption that skillfully balances supernatural horrors with spiritual uplift. Film rights to Fresco Pictures. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.