May We Be Forgiven - Softcover

Homes, A.M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847083234 ISBN 13: 9781847083234

Publisher: Granta Books, 2013

Synopsis

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013
Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper.They have been uneasy rivals since childhood.Then one day George loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. In May We Be Forgiven, Homes gives us a darkly comic look at 21st century domestic life - at individual lives spiraling out of control, bound together by family and history.The cast of characters experience adultery, accidents, divorce, and death. But this is also a savage and dizzyingly inventive vision of contemporary America, whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer - the strange jargons of its language, its passive aggressive institutions, its inhabitants' desperate craving for intimacy and their pushing it away with litigation, technology, paranoia. At the novel's heart are the spaces in between, where the modern family comes together to re-form itself. May We Be Forgiven explores contemporary orphans losing and finding themselves anew; and it speaks above all to the power of personal transformation - simultaneously terrifying and inspiring.

About this title

Review:

AM Homes is a masterful dissector of modern American life. She excels in portraying the minutiae of a dysfunctional family (is there any other kind?), creating characters who are both repellent and magnetic. Her writing exerts a push-pull that feels like being in a hall of mirrors. You want to run away but you find yourself compelled to look at the reflection ... AM Homes can't really be compared to any other writer; no one else is quite as dark and funny and elegant all at the same time. May We Be Forgiven has the narrative intensity of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and the emotional punch of Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved, all told through the eyes of Larry David. It's the best thing I've read this year. --Observer

A wonderful, wild, heartbreaking, hilarious and astonishing novel ... Homes is a very, very funny writer, brilliant at pinpointing the ridiculous nature of 21st-century living ... This is a piercing, perceptive and deeply funny novel about the nature of life, and about finding your family wherever you can, wherever you get comfort and something approaching love. --Independent on Sunday

She is one of the funniest writers laugh-out-loud funny. The internet dating scenes in her new novel include vengeful children making their own use of their mom s SM handcuffs. She has a deadpan understated humour that builds line by line into comic intent. Her humour is often overlooked by reviewers perhaps because women aren t supposed to be funny. --Jeanette Winterson, Guardian

This novel starts at maximum force - and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing. --Salman Rushie

To call May We Be Forgiven "compelling" would be an understatement; it is a novel as compulsive as its characters. --Financial Times

AM Holmes has put forward a strong bid [for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013]with her latest novel. Following her tradition of writing provocative and controversial fiction, May We Be Forgiven presents a black comedy of dysfunctional family life, launching forward in bursts of violent misfortune. ... A bristly, bumpy ride of a novel. --Daily Express

AM Holmes has put forward a strong bid [for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013]with her latest novel. Following her tradition of writing provocative and controversial fiction, May We Be Forgiven presents a black comedy of dysfunctional family life, launching forward in bursts of violent misfortune. ... A bristly, bumpy ride of a novel. --Daily Express

Like an edgier version of Jonathan Franzen ... a darkly comic & addictively readable winner --Guardian

May We Be Forgiven is I believe the only book that could have beaten Bring Up the Bodies. It's a wonderful book, full of unforgettable characters and surreal set pieces. It's her best novel to date a darkly hilarious blast of fresh air --Jon Howells, Waterstones

Sit back and enjoy Homes's delicious black humour, her sharp characterisation, and that thrilling narrative intensity. --Independent on Sunday

Inspiring ... May We Be Forgiven is a savage and dizzyingly inventive satire on contemporary America, whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer. --Stylist

Few literary novels get off to a more sensational start ... The result is horribly funny and unexpectedly uplifting, as Homes mercilessly exposes a world gone mad in her prize-winning novel. --'Our choice', Daily Mail

Inspiring ... May We Be Fo --'Books of the Year', Spectator

A sharply observant satire on modern family life that made me laugh out loud.

'The last great book I read was A M Homes's May We Be Forgiven. It's one of those rare delights: a weird, scary, comic novel that actually makes you laugh out loud.' - Simon Schama --'Readers best books of 2013', Guardian

Serious, silly, hilarious, slightly weird and so human, all at the same time. Harold Silver is a brilliantly redemptive soul and one of the best literary characters I've come across. --'Readers best books of 2013', Guardian

About the Author:

A. M. HOMES is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers and Jack, two collections of short stories, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects and the highly acclaimed memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, as well as the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and the Castle on the Hill. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes frequently on arts and culture for numerous magazines and newspapers. She is currently writing for a new major US TV Series. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1847083234
• ISBN 13: 9781847083234
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496