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		Review of Homefront by Kristen Tsetsi (self-published, 2007)		contents
		by Pat Lawrence
		_____Homefront is a skillfully-constructed narrative about the psychological strife-bordering on, but not quite becoming, devastation-suffered by those with loved ones fighting overseas. In this respect, it neither overstates nor undervalues this aspect of war's effects. Due largely to the tone and technique of the text, the travails of its protagonist are seen as individual rather than simplistically universal or over-generalized. For the most part it stays away from un-self-conscious cliché and avoids the temptation to cast the war at home as somehow more harrowing, more moving, or more intense than the war abroad. This is one of the insights it offers the reader: the idea that the relative insignificance of this suffering is part of its pain. _____In order to cause this struggle come alive, Homefront makes use of what I would call a hermeneutics of omission. Told almost like a diary, where the focus on the quotidian makes the book seem full of trivialities, what is essential is conveyed by what these trivialities elide. Significant action is frequently omitted or its revelation delayed in favor of the description of the common events of working class existence. Thus, their triviality is a screen for the unspoken, but nonetheless present, weight of the circumstances they have served to occlude. This lends a paradoxical depth to their triviality, imbuing the actions of everyday life with the sentimental significance they accrue through their association with partners, companions, and lovers-a significance that is amplified by their absence. The device also lends a bit of manufactured anticipation that makes the book feel more exciting, more gripping than its otherwise quotidian plot elements would suggest. _____Underpinning this hermeneutics is a strong use of materiality as a staging for psychology. Primarily through allegory, the characters are developed and the subtleties of their personalities evoked by their interactions with their surroundings-and by the nature of those surroundings themselves-from the fairly predictable onset of a storm before a conflict to the more subtle evocation of a friend's superficiality through reference to her manicured nails. Using materiality rather than dialogue or direct exposition creates an atmosphere of unspoken-ness that lends a sense of reticence to the narrator, as well as adding an atmospheric weight that could not have been present in the essentially depleting nature of description. This works in conjunction with the practice of omission. By skipping over the most remarkable objects or interesting action, anxiety about them and their significance is magnified in the reader's mind, and a sense of oppressive silence dominates, a sense that is reminiscent of artistic reactions to the horrors of twentieth-century wars. _____The book is undoubtedly well-crafted, perhaps thoroughly work-shopped [I discovered I was wrong about this-p.l.]; it demonstrates an incredible tightness of narrative in which no aspect is superfluous. Still, there are rare moments where the dialogue is stilted, or the events of the plot seem somehow too perfect, or, conversely, out of place. Further, secondary characters are often flattened, becoming foils for the narrator/protagonist who can be, at times, narcissistic and unsympathetic. Not often, but periodically, this tightness of construction is oppressive rather than impressive, as the text's ascetic style leaves little pleasure in language, is almost a-lyrical. This adds to the tone of the text, to the realization of a stark mood, but also wears on the reader-a superfluous consideration, perhaps, in light of the dark subject matter of the novel. _____Ultimately, however, Homefront takes advantage of its adroit construction to become an engaging narrative of psychological exhaustion against a backdrop of the war in Iraq. It ought to have broad appeal while remaining technically and theoretically interesting, and for those reasons is an uncommon success.
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