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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Lonnie Busch’s The Anything Room, after his son Kenny leaves home, widower Martin Moffett moves into a small bungalow. There, he discovers a concealed doorway in a spare room that leads into a living moment from the past where his late wife Noreen still exists. Martin begins returning through the passage to spend time with her while his present life continues with his partner Janelle and his adult son, forcing him to hide where he goes and what he is doing. As the secret grows harder to contain, the strange doorway begins pulling Kenny into its orbit as well, confronting him with someone from his own past that he believed he had lost forever. The room offers each one the chance to revisit lives that ended years earlier, placing both father and son in a dangerous position between the families they have now and the people they cannot stop returning to visit.
Lonnie Busch’s The Anything Room offers a refreshingly simple and straightforward mode of transport to an alternate timeline. Busch does not try to reinvent the wheel, settling instead on an ordinary threshold into an extraordinarily intense, bright light. I like Martin, and his cautious decision to spend time with his late wife is totally believable. In the real world, there is always the unspoken understanding when someone begins a new relationship with a widow or widower, that, given the choice, they would not be with spouse #2 if their first pick was still alive. This is why I feel incredibly sorry for Janelle. How do you compete with a living, loving, desperately missed non-ghost? The coolest character in the book? That goes to Benjamin Falco, a magician and the prior owner of the bungalow. With thoughtful prose and a beautifully transcendent message, this is literary fiction for those looking for a metaphysical twist, complete with Harley rides and a lovely finale. Very highly recommended.
