This Book Will Save Your Life

Description

Richard is a modern-day everyman, a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home in Los Angeles who needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world. One day he wakes up with a knotty cramp in his back, which rapidly develops into an all-consuming pain. At the same time a wide sinkhole appears outside his living-room window, threatening the foundations of his house. A vivid novel about compassion and transformation, This Book Will Save Your Life reveals what can happen if you are willing to open yourself up to the world around you. Since her debut in 1989, A. M. Homes 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 keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of this touching and funny novel.

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.

A. M. Homes' new novel is weird and warm and wise and really rather wonderful -- Mark Haddon Witty and well written while in pursuit of the spirits living inside the machine * Times * Homes is excellent on the inner workings of men * Time Out * There's weird and there's dark and there are the stories of this highly original and terrifying writer ... impressive stories -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * Makes you laugh out loud, then finally breaks your heart. That's why she has and deserves her A-list status * Independent * This book is a gentle, entertaining antidote to the over-achievements of much of modern life.It is fantstical, anti-American, anti-consumerist, anti-individualist ... it shifts your perspective on life in the most darkly entertaining way * Observer * This book is inspirational. It shows that with a little bit of courage you can change your life -- Georgia Foster * Woman Weekly *