Staff Pick
A. M. Homes never fails to deliver an emotionally accurate tale, and here she manages to make it hilarious, as well. Richard Novak's sterile, quiet life is shattered when he ends up in the emergency room one night with an apparent heart attack. What follows is a tale that only Homes could tell: Richard seems to "collect" people and order their lives, while his unravels. He takes on a woman he meets in a grocery store, as well as a bakery owner, a movie star, a reclusive writer, his own estranged son, and myriad other characters (including a dog). This sweet, engaging tale shows the wonders that can happen when you finally open yourself up to others and to the world. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
From the author of
Music for Torching an uplifting and apocalyptic tale set in Los Angeles about one man's efforts to bring himself back to life.
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.
Richard Novak is a modern-day Everyman, a middle-aged divorcé trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one except his trainer, nutritionist, and housekeeper. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice until two incidents an attack of intense pain that lands him in the emergency room, and the discovery of an expanding sinkhole outside his house conspire to hurl him back into the world. On his way home from the hospital, Richard forms the first of many new relationships: He meets Anhil, the doughnut shop owner, an immigrant who dreams big. He finds a weeping housewife in the produce section of the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, daringly rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house and he has to relocate to a Malibu rental, he befriends a reluctant counterculture icon. In the end, Richard is also brought back in closer touch with his family his aging parents, his brilliant brother, the beloved ex-wife whom he still desires, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, with his estranged son Ben.
The promised land of Los Angeles a surreal city of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and feral Chihuahuas is also very much a character in This Book Will Save Your Life. A vivid, revealing novel about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you, it should significantly broaden Homes's already substantial audience.
Review
Hilarious . . . Homes writes in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and has the talent to pull it off. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Synopsis
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 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. This Book Will Save Your Life is a vivid, uplifting, and revealing story about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you.
About the Author
A. M. Homes is the author of Things You Should Know, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, The Safety of Objects, and Jack, and Los Angeles: People, Places and the Castle on the Hill. Recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, she is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and publishes in the New Yorker, Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, Artforum, and the New York Times.