This Book Will Save Your Life

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With her signature humor and compassion, A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection – exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren’t quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.” — Chicago Review of Books 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.

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. Muir, Kate (May 2, 2009). "Swine flu...recession...should we all be reading Neil Strauss to survive". The Times. London . Retrieved May 1, 2010. But holy cow. This book was the most comforting thing I’ve read in a really long time. I absolutely loved each character and couldn’t of been happier to see their growth. I would be done reading for the day and my heart would ache because I missed the characters so much.So, I’ve been trying to analyze this. It’s like I’m mad about the ‘what might have beens’, or I’m mad that I’m such a wuss about taking chances. Mostly I’m just mad.

A.M. Homes skillfully circles and tugs at the question of what it means to live in flawed, fragile, hungry human bodies . . . DAYS OF AWE is sliced through with Homes’s dark humor . . . one wants to read passages of a Homes story aloud because they are so fine . . . DAYS OF AWE feels like the part of the day when the sun is about to go down and the light is brighter while the shadows are darker. Everything has a sharp edge, is strikingly beautiful and suddenly also a little menacing.” —Ramona Ausubel, The New York Times Book Review In addition she has been active on the Boards of Directors of Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center In Provincetown, The Writers Room, and PEN-where she chairs both the membership committee and the Writers Fund. Additionally she serves on the Presidents Council for Poets and Writers. My assistant is working on the harness. It's not an easy item. But don't worry, my team is on it, and they work magic." Homes’s keen ear for speech—surreal as her characters’ conversations often are—lends itself to varying degrees of self-aware misunderstanding, highlighting the complexity of language and the challenges . . . The impossibility of knowing another person completely is one of life’s painful truths, and [this] collection remind us of that—but [it] also shows that there are, at least, tools available to help us try.”— Vanity Fair

Fascinating . . . I consumed these stories exactly like a spectator of a good fight or a neighbor peering through the hedge, and I felt sharply observed in turn. Homes, with her fierce sharp wit, reveals her characters’ deep flaws. No one gets away with anything and the spectacle is delightful.”—Molly Livingston, The Paris Review Daily Carpenter, Susan (March 10, 2009). "Neil Strauss is ready for any emergency". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved March 26, 2009. zambra, “okumamak”ta a.m.homes’dan çok bahsediyor. bu kitap benim okumamak sonrası alışveriş listemdendi. ama yanlış kitapla mı başladım bilmiyorum. zaten irem (merixien) de yazmıştı yorumunda. beni de sarmadı. Wow. Wow. wow. This book sneaks up on you - it starts out really strong, and then only gets better.

In the title story, a Holocaust survivor taps into a theme of the collection when he describes the way people hold the history of previous generations inside them. ‘We carry it with us, not just in our grandmother’s silver,’ he says, ‘but in our bodies, the cells of our hearts.’” — Wall Street JournalA big American story with big American themes, the saga of the triumph of a new kind of self-invented nuclear family over cynicism, apathy, loneliness, greed, and technological tyranny…this novel has a strong moral core, neither didactic nor judgmental, that holds out the possibility of redemption through connection.”–Kate Christensen, Elle