This Book Will Save Your Life

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I read this in a couple of sittings, but I'm on some kind of mad reading binge right now, about a book a day, so that may not mean much. Is everything all right?" the girl's mother asks, arriving after the fact. "I was in the Valley. The traffic was horrible." In the title story, a Holocaust survivor taps into a theme of the collection when he describes the way people hold the history of previous generations inside them. ‘We carry it with us, not just in our grandmother’s silver,’ he says, ‘but in our bodies, the cells of our hearts.’”— Wall Street Journal But wave goodbye as he disappears, perhaps, over the horizon in the ocean, washed there by an earthquake that vomits a sea of sewage and detritus leaving him marooned gaily on a floating table with dog and cell phone. A metaphor for his once-charmed life in Los Angeles.

Richard goes outside, stands with his feet on the edge of the hole—it is definitely deeper than it was two hours ago. The horse looks up. A.M. Homes skillfully circles and tugs at the question of what it means to live in flawed, fragile, hungry human bodies . . . DAYS OF AWE is sliced through with Homes’s dark humor . . . one wants to read passages of a Homes story aloud because they are so fine . . . DAYS OF AWE feels like the part of the day when the sun is about to go down and the light is brighter while the shadows are darker. Everything has a sharp edge, is strikingly beautiful and suddenly also a little menacing.”—Ramona Ausubel, The New York Times Book Review I am truly a writer of fiction, working from my imagination, making up events and characters. At the same time, perhaps more than other books I’ve written, This Book Will Save Your Life is philosophically very much in line with what I try to put forward in my own life. A confession: I am that person who talks to strangers in elevators, who stops crying people on the street and asks if they’re OK, who offers to help an old person home with their groceries. And I find that my offer of help is equally as often accepted as it is rejected.

READERS GUIDE

Carpenter, Susan (March 10, 2009). "Neil Strauss is ready for any emergency". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved March 26, 2009.

The characters in this book are quirky and utterly hilarious. Set in LA, the people tend to be blunt, if not outright rude. Richard is such a likeable character, despite the fact it’s pretty clear he’s been behaving like a bit of an ass for going on ten years. But the important point is that we can see why. It makes sense, and he’s not behaving that way because he is an asshole, but because he’s afraid, and miserable and he doesn’t know what else to do. In some respects, Richard reminded me of my father. He wants to do well, but he just can’t quite figure out what it is that other people might need. neyse sonuçta kahramanın sonsuz yolculuğu misali richard’la oğlu ben’in yolculuklarına, kavgalarına, yüzleşmelerine şahit oluyoruz. baştaki saçmalıklar devam ediyor ve bu kez de yangınla final yapıyoruz.

What if whoever wrote the story of Job had a sense of humor? Nixon is pondered. One character donates her organs. Another tries to grow a heart. A seductive minefield of a novel from A.M. Homes.”—John Sayles, author of A Moment in the Sun

He gives away new cars, pays for his maid's hip replacement, sends the weary housewife to a spa. "This is the person he wants to be," Homes writes. "He wants to be able to do this for others, strangers, it doesn't matter who, and he wants to be able to do it for himself." His Good Samaritan impulse also inspires a series of impromptu rescue operations: A horse is trapped in a sinkhole, a hostage is trapped in a trunk, a woman is trapped in a bad marriage. These episodes are mildly amusing (for 15 minutes, he's a national celebrity, a punch line on Letterman), but because Richard is so imperturbable and his success so firmly guaranteed, the scenes never develop any real suspense. Enthralling . . . full of subversive humor and truth . . . original and stiletto sharp.”— The Washington Post A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

A big American story with big American themes, the saga of the triumph of a new kind of self-invented nuclear family over cynicism, apathy, loneliness, greed, and technological tyranny…this novel has a strong moral core, neither didactic nor judgmental, that holds out the possibility of redemption through connection.”–Kate Christensen, Elle 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.

So, I’ve been trying to analyze this. It’s like I’m mad about the ‘what might have beens’, or I’m mad that I’m such a wuss about taking chances. Mostly I’m just mad. 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. While the girl is on the phone, the movie star talks to Richard. "I don't trust this hole. We need a helicopter to lift the horse out of the hole. How does that sound?"

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Wow. Wow. wow. This book sneaks up on you - it starts out really strong, and then only gets better.