This Book Will Save Your Life
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
Since her debut in 1989, A. M. Homes, author of the forthcoming novel The Unfolding, 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.
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This was a light, refreshing read. Populated by surrealist situations and characters just on the near side of believability, This Book Will Save Your Life sometimes erred on the side of being too frivolous. On the other hand, the voyage of Richard was poignant and extremely applicable to modern times. Richard starts the novel as a perfectionist, number crunching, rich business man, who only eats the healthiest, most organic, of foods and has no real connection to other humans at all. Through the introduction of increasingly wacky characters including an Indian donut baker with a penchant for puns, a lonely housewife, a rich movie star and Richard's even more self-absorbed ex-wife, and even more wacky situations (kidnappings, all-white houses, horse-filled sinkholes and silent retreats), Richard learns to reach out and embrace the world. My only other complaint, beyond the twee-ness of several scenes would be the way that the only way Richard actually manages to meet so many people and free himself from the banality of life is by being incredibly rich, which kind of undercuts the message.
