AMERICAN HOMES
"Ridge's book explores the contradictions inherent in ideals of affluence and ownership, and does so admirably, without edging into sourness or satirical revenge killing. The humor is affable, and odd. Somewhere between Demetri Martin and Steven Wright, Jacques Tati and Wes Anderson, Ramon Gomez de la Serna and Georges Perec."–Kyle Coma-Thompson, Electric Lit
"While the specifics may vary, the significance of basements and attics, of windows and driveways, offer common ground. Ryan Ridge’s American Homes offers a look at that significance through satire and nostalgia. The book examines and exhausts the home. And in doing so, it honors, pokes fun at, and mourns the American Dream."–Christy Crutchfield, Small Press Book Review
"Take Away: If forced to find one house that could convey the experience of reading American Homes, I would have to choose the Winchester Mystery House, the sprawling mansion of lore built outside San Jose, California. Just like the constant additions Sarah Winchester made to her house throughout her lifetime, Ridge’s book is in a continuous state of architectural flux — narratives emerge and recede, jokes appear and react to one another, historical figures including Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and the ghost of Mark Twain make numerous cameos."–Ryan Hume, Coast Weekend
"Holy Hybrid! Author Ryan Ridge's new collection of essays, aphorisms, catalogues, puns, prose poems, anecdotes, ideas and instructions metafiction (and more!) is part George Saunders and part Southern Living."–Lynnell Edwards, Louisville Literary Arts
"American Homes is at odds with category: it doesn't really fit neatly, or even at all, into any preconceived notion of what prose fiction should read like, or effect in the reader. Ridge's novella-length work is something more like a Lonely Planet travel guide, or the recovered fragments of some distant, arcane encyclopedia."–Philip Witteveen, New Books in Literature Podcast
