This Book Will Save Your Life

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Since her debut in 1989, A.M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. Next time you see me, I'll be up there," he says, pointing up. He throws Richard a walkie-talkie. "We're on channel 12."

If all this brilliance sounds exhausting, don't be put off. The book is a gentle, entertaining antidote to the over-achievements of much of modern life. Set in Los Angeles, it is a peculiarly appealing story of Richard, an initially unlikable middle-aged man, wealthy, independent, divorced, estranged from his only son. If you have any ideas about the ending and what was going on there, I'd love to hear from you. I am so over the ambiguous ending, especially in a book that's not really good enough on its own for me to care. But I do want to know what happened to the dog. With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties through stories about unexpected situations.”— Time Despite many laugh out loud moments, the serious undertones in this novel are unmistakeable. Richard, in mending his relationship with his teenage son, “feels the full weight of the years he missed, the gap between how he is and how he wishes he could be…” Homes expertly reveals our common vulnerabilities, unashamedly and candidly puts emotion under the microscope. A commanding narrative…by turns witty and unnerving, and at times almost unbearable in its emotional intensity.”— Wall Street JournalYet, through all this you see him struggle with himself. His fear of dying, of not being a better son, brother, husband, father. This is what makes me just want to be in his presence, like maybe I’d catch some of what he is. I’d be tempted to use the word ‘aura’ but it might just be the Californian influence within the book, This is what made me hate to see the book end. Early on in the novel, Richard describes his eating habits and himself as “Mr. Healthy”: “I eat cereal that the nutritionist makes for me; it tastes like wood chips. I drink Lactaid milk. I never break the rules.” From his neighbor’s intravenous vitamin infusions to the assortment of pies proffered as goodwill tokens, food and eating take on a peculiar glow in the novel. In what ways does Homes use food and eating—sustenance—as a metaphor? For every time I started to think this book was just lightly entertaining there would come a scene so real and brutal it would hurt a bit. Broken child-parent relationships. Exes whose scent still lingers. Women sobbing in the produce section of a supermarket. It's been all over the TV," Richard says, leading him in, pointing to the screen. "You looked pretty good in that helicopter."

I started reading A.M. Homes twenty years ago. Wild and funny, questioning and true, she is a writer to go travelling with on the journey called life.”—Jeanette Winterson, New York Times bestselling author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?DAYS OF AWE Since finishing the novel, I’ve been working on a memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter, a portion of which appeared in The New Yorker in December 2004. It’s the story of my biological parents, who gave me up for adoption and then came looking for me when I was in my early thirties. It is in part a story of what it means to be adopted, but it is also about identity, how all of us—not just adoptees—define and construct our sense of self and our family. As startling and riveting as her fiction . . . a lacerating memoir in which the formerly powerless child triumphs with the help of a mighty pen.”– San Francisco Chronicle What if whoever wrote the story of Job had a sense of humor? Nixon is pondered. One character donates her organs. Another tries to grow a heart. A seductive minefield of a novel from A.M. Homes.”—John Sayles, author of A Moment in the Sun

Darkly funny…the moments shared between this ad hoc family are the novel’s most endearing…Homes’ signature trait is a fearless inclination to torment her characters and render their failures, believing that the reader is sophisticated enough – and forgiving enough – to tag along.”—Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Time Magazine