NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
A group of narrators takes turns delivering Homes's story collection, offering a mixture of tones and textures that add weight and specificity to her characters and storylines. Melding the bizarre and the mundane, Homes depicts the odd rhythms and lingering emotions that are present in both daily life and outlandish situations, while the characterizations of the narrators allude to the dissatisfaction and restlessness that many of these characters are experiencing. The pacing is at times disjointed, but the emotions and dialogue are solid, illuminating the tension in many uncomfortable moments. Homes's characters are flawed, complex, and deeply introspective, and while there's little overlap between stories, each narrator works to create a cohesive listening experience, capturing the tones and style of Homes's atmospheric, melancholy pieces. K.S.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/30/2018
Homes’s uneven collection of short fiction (following the novel May We Be Forgiven) searches for humor and wonder amidst the anxieties of contemporary America. In “Brother on Sunday,” a brother-in-law’s unwelcome visit shines light on the blemishes of a very surface-obsessed marriage. Totaling only five pages, “Whose Story Is It, and Why Is It Always on Her Mind?” follows a self-harmer who pushes thorns into the soles of her feet. Over the course of 50 pages, the exemplary title story details a long-coming tryst between two middle-aged writers, a war correspondent and a novelist. Two stories, the pleasantly listless “Hello Everybody” and the movingly tragic “She Got Away,” share characters and setting, though each trains its own unique lens onto the lives of young and old in Los Angeles. Strong as these selections may be, the collection suffers overall from the inclusion of the lackluster alongside the great, interesting experiments that never quite feel like finished products. Nowhere is this more evident than in “The National Cage Bird Show,” which attempts—and fails—to take on both military life and sexual assault by way of a chat room for parakeet owners. Still, Homes’s fans—as well as readers looking for sharp and funny short fiction—will find much to enjoy. (June)
From the Publisher
DAYS OF AWE
“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
“Exuberantly transgressive.” —O, the Oprah Magazine
“[Homes] has shown a unique penchant for cracking open the dark heart of human nature — with irreverent wit, devastating empathy and haunting shocks . . . DAYS OF AWE [is] a memorable assortment of new tales about family, love, death, and an unqualified man who somehow stumbles into becoming a populist political candidate.” —Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
“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
"With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties through stories about unexpected situations." —Time
“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 Journal
MAY WE BE FORGIVEN
Winner of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction
“An entertaining, old-fashioned American story about second chances…A.M. Homes is a writer I’ll pretty much follow anywhere because she’s indeed so smart, it’s scary; yet she’s not without heart…May We Be Forgiven [is] deeply imbued with the kind of It’s A Wonderful Life-type belief in redemption that we Americans will always be suckers for, and rightly so.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
“Cheever country with a black comedy upgrade…Homes crams a tremendous amount of ambition into May We Be Forgiven, with its dark humor, its careening plot, its sex-strewn suburb and a massive cast of memorable characters...its riskiest content, however, is something different: sentiment. This is a Tin Man story, in which the zoned-out Harry slowly grows a heart.” —Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times
“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
“Homes, whose masterful handling of suburban dystopia merits her own adjective, may have just written her midcareer magnum opus with this portrait of a flawed Nixonian bent on some sort of emotional amnesty.” —Christopher Bollen, Interview
“At once tender and uproariously funny…one of the strangest, most miraculous journeys in recent fiction, not unlike a man swimming home to his lonely house, one swimming pool at a time: it is an act of desperation turned into one of grace.” —John Freeman, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A 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
“A.M. Homes has long been one of our most important and original writers of fiction. May We Be Forgiven is her most ambitious as well as her most accessible novel to date; sex and violence invade the routines of suburban domestic life in a way that reminded me of The World According to Garp, although in the end it’s a thoroughly original work of imagination.” –Jay McInerney, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Life
“I started this book in the A.M., finished in the P.M., and couldn’t sleep all night. Ms. Homes just gets better and better.” —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
“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
“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?
THE MISTRESS' DAUGHTER
"A compelling, devastating, and furiously good book written with an honesty few of us would risk." —Zadie Smith
"Fierce and eloquent." —The New York Times Book Review
"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
"Rich in humanity and humor . . . Homes combines an unfussy candor with a deliciously droll, quirky wit. . . . Her energy and urgency become infectious." —USA Today
"I fell in love with it from the first page and read compulsively to the end." —Amy Tan
"As a memoirist, A.M. Homes takes a characteristically fierce and fearless approach. And she has a whopper of a personal story to tell." —Chicago Tribune
THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE
“Homes’ dark delivery . . . is in full regalia here. . . . Laugh-out loud funny.” —The Boston Globe
“An absolute masterpiece . . . Homes writes ecstatically, and like no one else.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“I think this brave story of a lost man’s reconnection with the world could become a generational touchstone, like Catch-22, The Monkey Wrench Gang, or The Catcher in the Rye. . . . And hey, maybe it will save somebody’s life.” —Stephen King
Hilarious . . . Homes writes in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and has the talent to pull it off.” —San Francisco Chronicle
IN A COUNTRY OF MOTHERS
"Homes...has the ability to scare you half to death....[She is] devastating...a very dangerous writer." —Washington Post Book World
"A commanding narrative...by turns witty and unnerving, and at times almost unbearable in its emotional intensity.” —Wall Street Journal
"Intriguing...captures a world spinning out of control....Homes is at her best evoking the pathos and obsession at the center of relationships between therapist and patient, mother and child, husband and wife. She is also wickedly funny. [This is] a psychologically gripping story.” —San Francisco Chronicle
THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS
“Enthralling . . . full of subversive humor and truth . . . original and stiletto sharp.” —The Washington Post
“Wonderfully skewed stories . . . sharp, funny, and playful . . . Homes is confident and consistent in her odd departures from life as we know it, sustaining credibility by getting details right. A fully engaged imagination [is] at work—and play.” —Amy Hempel, The Los Angeles Times
“Alarmingly good . . . It is hard to say exactly who Homes’s predecessors are—Roald Dahl, Rachel Ingalls, and J.D. Salinger all come to mind—but in many ways she is not unlike Cheever.” —The Village Voice
“These stories are remarkable. They are awesomely well-written. In the sense of arousing fear and wonder in the reader they entertain, but what they principally bring us is a sense of recognition . . . Here are all the things that even today, even in our frank outspoken times, we don’t talk about. We think of them punishingly in sleepless nights.” —Ruth Rendell
“An unnerving glimpse through the windows of other people’s lives. A.M. Homes is a provocative and eloquent writer, and her vision of the way we live now is anything but safe.” —Meg Wolitzer
THE UNFOLDING
Fortchoming September 2022
"From her first book onward, A.M. Homes has been challenging us to look at fiction, the world, and one other as we haven’t done—because we haven’t had the nerve, the eyes, the dire and dispassionate imagination. Gripping, sad, funny, by turns aching and antic and, as always, exceedingly well-observed and written, The Unfolding opens up another one of her jagged windows, at times indistinguishable from a crack, in the world that is always unfolding, and always vanishing, around us. " — Michael Chabon, bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“A terrific black comedy, written almost entirely in pitch-perfect dialogue, that feels terrifying close to the unfunny truth.” — Salman Rushdie, New York Times bestselling author of The Golden House and Quichotte
"A dazzling portrait of a family—and a country—in flux. A story about what happens when truths that once seemed self-evident turn out to be neither self-evident nor even true. A.M. Homes has perfectly captured an America as it lurches toward freak-out, and a family as it shreds the lies it’s been living by. The Unfolding is hilarious and shocking and heartbreaking and just a little bit deranged—in other words, it’s a book that feels like what it feels like to be alive right now." —Nathan Hill, author of The Nix
NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
A group of narrators takes turns delivering Homes's story collection, offering a mixture of tones and textures that add weight and specificity to her characters and storylines. Melding the bizarre and the mundane, Homes depicts the odd rhythms and lingering emotions that are present in both daily life and outlandish situations, while the characterizations of the narrators allude to the dissatisfaction and restlessness that many of these characters are experiencing. The pacing is at times disjointed, but the emotions and dialogue are solid, illuminating the tension in many uncomfortable moments. Homes's characters are flawed, complex, and deeply introspective, and while there's little overlap between stories, each narrator works to create a cohesive listening experience, capturing the tones and style of Homes's atmospheric, melancholy pieces. K.S.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-03-20
A collection that examine the absurdities of modern life.In the title story of Homes' (May We Be Forgiven, 2012, etc.) latest collection, a love affair is sparked between former friends when they are reunited at a genocide conference. The strangeness of this serves to illuminate the complex depths of their emotional states. It also creates opportunities for dark humor. As the conference begins, the leader poses the big question: "Why do Genocide(S) continue to happen?" And then "He goes on to thank their sponsors." "A Prize for Every Player" carries on the theme of consumerism. It opens with a family competing "boys versus girls" in an elaborate version of Supermarket Sweep. After finding a human baby in an aisle, Tom—the father—launches into a long, nostalgic monologue about America. Throughout the book, dialogue is given tremendous weight and space. Characters speak in full paragraphs, and where there is self-awareness about that, it is quirky and fun. When shoppers overhear Tom, they convince him to run for president. Too often, however, such awareness is lacking. This is most glaringly the case in "The National Cage Bird Show," a story told entirely through messages in a chat room for bird owners. Even when there is an actual narrator, Homes shies away from exposition, forcing her characters to say too much. Nonetheless, there are many true gems of conversation. "Her face is ruined," a mother says in "Hello Everybody." It is the first thing she says upon seeing her child in the hospital after a grizzly car accident. "I'm calling Dr. Pecker…if there's anyone he'll come in off the golf course for, it's me." " ‘Leave it,' the daughter [begs]. ‘I'll look like I've lived.' "Stories filled with dark wit in the tradition of Amy Hempel and Joy Williams.
