A complicated return for a prodigal daughter
In the first sentence of Kate Chr istensen’s unf l inching eighth novel, “Welcome Home, Stranger,” the reader learns that Rachel Calloway’s mother has died — and she does what most people do when a parent passes away: “You get on a plane and go home.”
Rachel, an award- winning climatechange journalist, barely manages to collect herself for a f light bound for Portland, Maine. “My jeans are flecked with lint, my eyes are gritty, my teeth skuzzy, my hair a cloud of chaos,” she says. “I look and feel exactly like what I am: a middleaged childless recently orphaned menopausal workaholic journalist.” As it turns out, Rachel hasn’t returned home in almost a decade after a falling- out with her negligent, alcoholic mother.
Christensen’s use of present tense brings an immediacy and urgency to her storytelling, with the reader riding shotgun as Rachel tumbles headlong into the chaos of her life, past and present. In contrast, her privileged younger sister lives a life of shiny domestic perfection ( or so it seems). Celeste, who nursed their mother through her illness, ferries her teenage twins around in a Mercedes SUV while her wealthy husband, a wannabe playwright, sips one glass of wine after another. “This is my family. These are my people,” Rachel tells us. “It’s not easy to come back here, not easy to find my place again, like a book I abandoned midway through and lost the thread of.”
Given the spotlight on midlife, one might describe “Welcome Home, Stranger” as a menopause novel, comparable to Dana Spiotta’s “,” which tells the story of Samantha Raymond, a 53- yearold woman looking for meaning amid the turmoil following the 2016 election. Indeed, our shelves could use more women like Rachel and Sam as a counterpoint to men in midlife who’ve dominated fiction for decades — Richard Ford’s , John Updike’s , Saul Bellow’s , among others. It’s exhilarating to read an uninhibited female character who is rife with contradictions. Passive and full of agency. Thoughtful and self- centered. Calculated and impulsive.
“It’s a weird age, isn’t it?” Rachel asks her high school nemesis. “I can feel myself becoming invisible. It’s a diminishment and a superpower at the same time.”
Christensen also does a skillful job of animating difficult family relationships while avoiding a conventional arc of forgiveness. When Rachel returns to the land of her childhood, the compass of her former self often doesn’t lead her in the right direction: Her old boyfriend has married her sister’s best friend and let’s just say, some passionate antics ensue. Later, Rachel recruits a homeless veteran to help renovate the townhouse she’s inherited from her mother; once again, complications arise. All the while, Rachel is attempting to make sense of the strained relationship she had with her mother. As a middle- aged, childless woman who lost both parents not too long ago, I appreciate Christensen’s efforts to explore this gray territory of intimacy and estrangement. It’s not an easy story to tell.
Nevertheless, “Welcome Home, Stranger” doesn’t always deliver. Driven by Rachel’s over- analytical first- person voice, the narrative — as well as the dialogue — is frequently freighted with exposition, which, in turn, sometimes flattens the reckless spirit of the novel. A subplot related to the narrator’s own patterns of drinking and abstinence doesn’t quite track, and a pileup of convenient plot turns gave me a bit of whiplash.