Wednesday, May 13, 2015

A. M. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

I adored A. M. Homes's book May We Be Forgiven, and so I picked up this one - which has come to be known as a cult classic - with great anticipation. Unfortunately, This Book Will Save Your Life reads a little like the dress rehearsal for May We Be Forgiven, which was published 6 years later.  Had I read it first, I might have liked it better. And don't get me wrong - I did enjoy this book, but it doesn't have the finesse of Homes's later work.

Richard Novak is a wealthy trader in Los Angeles, living a life almost entirely independent of other people, until a health scare - unbearable, unlocalized pain - lands him in hospital and wakes him back up to the world. Over the course of the next months, he wrangles his way back into the lives of other people, performing acts of kindness for strangers, reconnecting with family members, and embracing the strangeness of life. Indeed, highly peculiar things happen to him in rather quick succession: a sinkhole forms outside his house and a horse falls into it, the Hollywood actor living above him rescues the horse by helicopter and cooks Richard dinner, he gets hit by a car, is treated by a fake doctor with remarkable insight, goes on silent retreat, saves one woman from a hapless marriage and another from almost certain death, becomes nationally known as "The Good Samaritan", rents a house in Malibu belonging to the mayor, and befriends the White Whale of the writing world, a decrepit fellow who wrote the last Great American Novel and might just be writing the next. In the midst of all this, Richard's abandoned son comes to stay. 

Interspersed in the bizarre turnings of the plot are moments of great joy, through which Richard remembers again what it is to be human. This is a book of hope and optimism, in spite of the sardonic tone Homes adopts towards the LA landscape and its jaded inhabitants.

Honestly, if May We Be Forgiven had not mirrored the plot of this book so exactly - its protagonist is a man who is jolted out of his lackluster life by tragedy, which has the effect of rejuvenating him as he is forced to interact with strangers, cope with bizarre encounters and form a new relationship with his brother's children - I probably would have found it breathtakingly original. It's just that Homes did it better the second time around (as one would hope), and that's the book I happened to read first. 

Overall assessment: 3.8 out of 5 stars. My bookclub has introduced me to the use of the full spectrum of decimal points in ratings, and I like the subtlety it allows me in rating a book. 

Memorable moments: Anhil, the owner of the doughnut shop Richard ends up in on the night he "wakes up", is perfectly positioned as the outsider in America, a Hindu immigrant whose vision of the USA comes largely from movies and misunderstandings. Much of the insight and humour in the novel stems from Anhil's left-of-centre comments.

"Americans try on the spiritual life of others like they don't have any of their own."

"Explain, why does everyone in American pretend to be blind? They practice not seeing. They get into the car and they call someone on the cell phone. They are afraid to be alone but they don't see the people around them."