I haven’t read any Rachel Joyce for a while. A few years ago I did enjoy The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (and the subsequent film) followed by Maureen Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Quite a moving trilogy. In Homemade God we are faraway from Harold’s genteel suburbia, instead transported to the Italian lakes, Lake Orta specifically, hidden away in the Piedmont.
The story is of a dysfunctional family who all worship their father Vic Kemp, an artist of sorts, who dies unexpectedly at their sun baked villa on an island in the middle of Lake Orta. The family gather and the reader watches as relationships begin to fracture and crumble and subsequent lives back in London diverge and separate. Rachel Joyce explores the complicated area of sibling bonds and how memory is unreliable. She is an emotionally intelligent writer and this is an enjoyable, sharp and witty novel. If you are about to go on holiday, take this book with you.