How Does 'Home Is Where The Bodies Are' End?

I am super, duper obsessed with ‘Home Is Where the Bodies Are’ already after the first chapter! The way it unravels is like watching a slow motion car crash. I haven’t read a book in a long time that has caused me as much horror as this has. The whole story builds up to this house of cards of family secrets and then it all goes up in flames. For months the main character searched for his siblings who had disappeared one by one and in the end he finds out that his parents were responsible for their deaths in one way or another. Not that they were neglectful or anything, no. They actively covered up the murders in order to protect the family’s reputation. The main character is shocked and in that moment of realization he snaps. It’s not a dramatic event where he screams at the top of his lungs, no. It’s almost silent. He walks down to the basement where the bodies of his siblings were found and where the main character had hidden as a child to escape from his dysfunctional family. There he finds the tools that were used to bury his siblings and in a fit of rage he picks up a rusty old shovel, the same one that was used to dig the graves, and starts swinging it. The rest of the book is ambiguous and we are left wondering if the main character killed his parents or not and whether he is mourning their deaths or not. He walks out of the house with blood on his hands but he just keeps walking. The end. No closure. No resolution. He is what he hated the most.

The epilogue was also very powerful. It’s years after the main character has left home and he is now living under an assumed identity. He’s working a very mundane job and he’s long since given up any hope of finding out what really happened to his family. But then one day he receives a letter from the one sibling that he had never been able to find. The sibling had run away as a teenager and the main character had always wondered what had become of him. But the main character had long since given up hope of ever finding out. In the letter the other sibling apologizes for never having been able to make contact before and explains that he has been watching the main character from afar for years. But he doesn’t want to reconnect with the main character. He simply wants to let him know that he hopes he found his version of home. The main character is taken aback by this and it really makes him think. The whole book was about the main character searching for a home and for answers and in the end he finds his home but it’s not what he expected. And the answer to all of his questions is that he buried himself alive in order to survive. The whole book is about home and about how home isn’t where the bodies are buried. It’s where you bury yourself to survive.

I keep coming back to the epilogue, long after the rest of the book has settled. The protagonist is living under a new name now, in a dull grey building with a 9 to 5 job he doesn’t care about. And then, after years of silence, a letter arrives from the one sibling who left home as a teenager. There’s no desire for reunion, or even revenge. Just three short sentences: “I’ve been watching you all this time. I hope you found your version of home.” I wept at this because it pulls the sting of the book’s premise and really drives home the book’s true insight: home is where you bury yourself to survive, not where the bodies are buried. The rest of the book made me wish for answers that I didn’t get. This though? This was worth waiting for. A scalpel of prose cutting open very old wounds. And that image of the protagonist staring at his own face in a motel mirror, wondering if he’s anything more than the sum of his parents’ evil? Chilling.

The central mystery is solved for the reader. Who killed the three people found dead at the start of the book and why they did it is clear to the reader. Also, the extent of the parents' involvement in all of the children's deaths is also clear to the reader. All of the major character's story lines come to a close. While not happy for all of the characters, they are all resolved in some way for the reader. None of the pivotal characters are left in harm's way. The reader is also left with knowledge of the family's property. However, the reader is left with many unanswered questions about the rest of the town's mysteries and many of the minor characters. However, the protagonist's future is left somewhat open but is headed in a specific direction. This book has a very practical ending for a reader. The main plot points are resolved but there is also left some lingering atmosphere and many small questions that the reader can ponder after finishing the book.

The end of the story treats technology with the same sort of disdain as the rest of the human behavior on display. There is no convenient last minute digital clue, no cell phone recording of incriminating evidence. Rather the core evidence is all analog: a handwritten letter, a physical photograph, a mark in a tree. The confrontation of the truth is not recorded for posterity, and is instead revealed through the simple act of talk and the relics from which the memories were culled. This is a very old, almost primal sort of story. A series of human crimes and their subsequent cover-up are revealed to be purely human in nature. They could have happened fifty years ago or yesterday, and it is this fact that underscores their universality as a story. The fundamental human failures of greed, fear, and love turned to possession are laid bare before us in all their simple, non-technological glory. Words, objects, human choices.