This Book Will Save Your Life

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The movie star laughs. "I'll tell you a secret," he says. "But you have to swear not to tell anyone."

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 I was thinking of good citizenship. I always used to win that one. By the way, I didn't get your name." A police car on a routine patrol stops in front of the house. "Why didn't you call us? We like to know what's going on. What is going on?" There's a young girl walking down the street, her mouth open. She is in the middle of the street calling out something—he hears only a muffled version. He takes off his headphones.

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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." 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

A commanding narrative…by turns witty and unnerving, and at times almost unbearable in its emotional intensity.”— Wall Street Journal Rich in humanity and humor . . . Homes combines an unfussy candor with a deliciously droll, quirky wit. . . . Her energy and urgency become infectious.”– USA Today

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Richard ends up making friends with a donut maker, a supposedly ‘homeless’ man who lives next door, a mother of a handful of kids to a drongo of a father who decides to leave him, a talking car, Bob Dylan, a dog called Malibu and so, so, so much more. 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 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

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.In April of 2007 Viking published her long awaited memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, the story of the author being "found" by her biological family, and a literary exploration and investigation of identity, adoption and genealogical ties that bind. 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 I loved this book. I loved every single character in this book. From Anhil, the existentialist donut man, to the overworked ex-wife (she who shall not be named, I guess), to misguided, sweet Ben, to the misunderstood, sweet Nic, to Cynthia---who I can so relate to---but most of all, I love Richard. 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 There are some very serious themes here. How does this man (Richard) who’s made a fortune playing the financials – in what is a fairly sensible, structured, disciplined world – become a guy who decides to take on a woman, as a friend, who he meets in a local supermarket sobbing like a baby because of her miserable life. Richard’s new friendship with the owner of a donut shop is equally as unlikely.