Be Specific About Regarding Books This Book Will Save Your Life
| Title | : | This Book Will Save Your Life |
| Author | : | A.M. Homes |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 372 pages |
| Published | : | April 20th 2006 by Viking Adult (first published 2006) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Contemporary. Novels |
Explanation In Favor Of Books This Book Will Save Your Life
From the author of Music for Torching-an uplifting and apocalyptic tale set in Los Angeles about one man's efforts to bring himself back to lifeSince 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 her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years.
Richard Novak is a modern-day Everyman, a middle-aged divorcé trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one- except his trainer, nutritionist, and housekeeper. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice until two incidents-an attack of intense pain that lands him in the emergency room, and the discovery of an expanding sinkhole outside his house-conspire to hurl him back into the world. On his way home from the hospital, Richard forms the first of many new relationships: He meets Anhil, the doughnut shop owner, an immigrant who dreams big. He finds a weeping housewife in the produce section of the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, daringly rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house and he has to relocate to a Malibu rental, he befriends a reluctant counterculture icon. In the end, Richard is also brought back in closer touch with his family-his aging parents, his brilliant brother, the beloved ex-wife whom he still desires, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, with his estranged son Ben.
The promised land of Los Angeles-a surreal city of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and feral Chihuahuas-is also very much a character in This Book Will Save Your Life. A vivid, revealing novel about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you, it should significantly broaden Homes's already substantial audience.
Describe Books As This Book Will Save Your Life
| Original Title: | This Book Will Save Your Life |
| ISBN: | 0670034932 (ISBN13: 9780670034932) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Los Angeles, California(United States) |
Rating Regarding Books This Book Will Save Your Life
Ratings: 3.66 From 9522 Users | 1066 ReviewsAssessment Regarding Books This Book Will Save Your Life
First of all I need to admit that this book was written very well. The author has a compelling style and it's very easy to read. I read this book faster than I usually do because the prose just flowed off the page and through my brain. For that reason alone I'm glad I read this book, and it's the reason it has two stars rather than one.Sadly this book goes nowhere. At all. Things happen. There are even plot resolutions. But they're so artfully hidden, so well-buried under that pile of prose thatThree and a half stars.An imagined medical emergency brings on an existential crisis in an over-bred, overwealthy but rather likeable WASP who is brought into contact with people who have little money and discovers they are as real as he is. Those with money in the book seem to be shallow and self-invented and those without have, thinks the protagonist, the secret of life. And donuts.But wave goodbye as he disappears, perhaps, over the horizon in the ocean, washed there by an earthquake that
Such a delightfully weird book. At times it feels like watching this vast nervous breakdown unfold, but it can really get to you, make you experience the narrator's odd, diffuse discomfort. I'm not quite sure it's a book about depression, anxiety disorder or whatnot, though again you do get the distinct sense of malaise a depressive feels. And of course Homes can suddenly become side-splittingly funny. I could see why certain readers would find this particular book tiresome, but I really enjoyed
In the latter of her two literary epochs (the first being characterized by gritty, hyper-sexualized works like Jack and The End of Alice), A.M. Homes has written about slightly absurd things that happen to slightly absurd people. This Book Will Save Your Life fits this mold almost too perfectly: a man's nervous breakdown leads to a series of unusual events, each helping him return his life to good 'ol fashioned American normalcy. That This Book Will Save Your Life is one of Homes's most
Ok. I finished this book. I started out excited about it. I liked the charachter and wondered what was going to happen. It was very easy to read and had a variety of characters. I get the everyday stuff that people go through.....and the feeling that each of them had of just wanting to be normal. But what is normal anyway?? I guess what ruined this book for me was the realationship and character of the son. I was so disappointed at what the author made him out to be that it ruined the book for
(Melo)drama Just for Laugh The self-recovery theme (with its adjacent motives - the assumption of the past and the reshaping of the future) was explored by so many authors that it seemed at some point a too beaten path. Well, if you thought so also, This Book Will Save Your Life may surprise you, beginning with the very title, with its misleading promise of both of a salutary epiphany and a useful tip for self-help, and continuing with a perpetual contrast between the gravity of the theme and
This Book Will Save Your Life begins with Richard Novak, a wealthy Los Angeleno, having a health scare that sends him to the emergency room. The trauma causes Richard to look at the world and his outward success differently and he begins to make connections with the people he encounters--the man who sells him donuts, a woman he sees crying in the produce section, a neighbor he had never talked to--and with the people that he has spent a great deal of his adult life trying to avoid--his parents,
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