A.M. Homes is an author I feel I should like. Her work is described as dark, edgy, even vile. All these are good adjectives for a writer as far as I'm concerned. So I gave her a second look. A few months ago I tried to read another of her novels and I gave up on it after about 80 pages. And I nearly threw in the towel after 80 pages of this one. But I forced myself to push on to the end. I figured it was now or never. If I didn't finish this book chances are I'd never get up the impetus to begin another.
If "This Book Will Save Your Life" is dark, edgy, and vile it's the mainstream, Main Street, People magazine version of dark, edgy, and vile. It's not Kathy Acker dark; it isn't William S. Burroughs vile; it isn't Jeanette Winterson edgy. These are my touchstones when it comes to applying the criteria of "dark, edgy, and vile" to literature. Just so you know. Just to be fair. Just in the interest of full disclosure.
The book opens with a middle-aged guy in L.A. having some sort of attack that sends him to the emergency room. He figures he's dying; but the doctors can find nothing wrong with him. The episode prompts him to reevaluate his life (as a dysfunctional child, failed husband, absentee parent, etc), which for years now, after his divorce, has been devoted exclusively to making money trading stocks on the internet and basically insulating himself from the world and others.
The first 30 pages describing Richard's mysterious medical episode are pretty harrowing. They make for compelling reading. The remaining 340, however, devolve into a kind of picaresque comic romp that gets more and more outlandish and unbelievable with each episode. Though the theme is "serious," I guess the reader isn't supposed to take the actual plot very seriously. It's a parody of reality amplified to make a point. And the point is that we should do our best to stay connected to each other, do good, help each other out. It's not exactly an original message and it isn't conveyed with any particular originality or depth of thought. Just the opposite. Homes plays it all for yucks. There's really no other way to consider this book as "literature" except to think of it as satire. At least one reviewer compares Homes to Vonnegut. I guess if you're determined enough, you could stretch that sort of game to compare her to Twain. But it's a stretch. She's critiquing American society, the American psyche, the American experience. But she isn't doing it in any way that hasn't been done before and done a lot better.
Homes is no prose stylist either. She's no Don DeLillo. She's no Mary Gaitskill. She's no William Gass. No Acker, Winterson, or Burroughs. Her writing is serviceable. It gets the job done. It does what it's supposed to do: create comic skits, tell jokes, go for laughs. She's Chuck Palahniuk Lite. She's Bret Easton Ellis Extra Light. And what plagues Palahniuk and Ellis plagues Homes. After a while, she starts to sound like a parody of herself. The first 80 pages of the book I put down last year bears a striking similarity to this one. Homes is sort of a one-trick pony. It's great trick the first time, but not so great the third time.
Here's the thing: I didn't find her terribly amusing. But you might. Humor may be universal but not everyone makes everyone laugh. Homes practices a kind of fast-and-loose writing style that depends on carrying readers along on a rising wave of laughter. If you don't think she's funny, she doesn't carry you anywhere. You're left adrift watching the wave go on to shore—or worse, you're dragged unsmilingly along. That's the way I felt sitting through this 372 page comedy routine. There were moments, but they were too few and far between for me.
Anyway, I feel that I did due diligence to A.M. Homes. She's considered a major contemporary writer in many circles, which, having now finished one of her best-regarded and most celebrated books, surprises me. But that's the way it goes. She's probably hit that elusive middle-note that makes her intelligent enough, but not too intelligent, dark but not too dark, edgy but not too edgy to threaten, challenge, or truly disturb the great middle ground of American readers. She's a good example of Literature-Lite.
If this book changes your life it won't change it too much, and that is what most people want: just a little change, nothing drastic, nothing you'd notice much at all, really. I don't feel inclined to read her again. But I urge you to give her a try. Too many people like her for them all to be wrong about what most people really want: a tiny taste of risk that substitutes for taking any real risks at all.
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