HALF-REVIEW: This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes

I’m calling this a “Half-Review,” because, as I mentioned in my last post, This Book Will Save Your Life (2006) has been officially exiled to my Abandoned Books pile. That said, I don’t think it’s completely fair to give you a “full review” of the book. And yet, if I read enough to know I don’t want to finish it, I must still have some strong feelings about it, right? So let’s explore those…

My first problem with This Book actually begins on the very front cover, with its title.

THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE

Um...thanks(?)

That’s quite the promise. In fact, it seems as though Homes forgot that there is no such thing as a book that could possibly, truly be for everyone. We’re all much too different to assume that EVERY PERSON EVER could possibly enjoy this ONE special book or could possibly get something meaningful out of it.

Atop that, the title commits a cardinal sin of writing/naming:

The book is written from the third-person point of view. Normal stuff, really. So WHY ON EARTH is the title 1) in second-person, and 2) breaking the fourth wall? What?! This is crazy, and completely out of step with everything else about the book.

A pro tip for you writers out there: A title should always represent the book, not try to make a statement about the book. Always always always.

Ugh. Anyway. Let’s move past the title.

Much like I explained in my post about the book Nod, This Book Will Save Your Life suffers heavily from the Premise v. Story conundrum.

Premise: A man, Richard, has some sort of heart attack-ish episode. After leaving the hospital, he decides to turn his life around.

All that is totally fine. (Rather over-done, but oh well.)

Moving past the premise, though, why did Homes choose this series of events and this cast of characters to move the story along?

I bring this up because This Book is, frankly, incredibly ludicrous. It is a ridiculous farce of completely unrealistic characters having deeply implausible conversations, all revolving around a series of absurd scenarios that are too improbable to appreciate.

Here’s just a partial list of the characters from the 104 pages I read:

• The 911 operator who is extremely blasé and doesn’t bother getting around to the point – you know, the fact that our protagonist is having a heart attack and calling 911 in the first place – for an entire page’s worth of dialogue.
• The “counselor” whom the 911 operator then transfers Richard to so that he can talk about his life and his feelings while he waits for the paramedics to arrive. Did I mention this is while he is having a heart attack?
• The doctor’s receptionist who is more interested in validating Richard’s parking than treating him as a patient. (And, when he calls the receptionist again 80 pages later, the first thing she asks is if he got his parking validated last time.)
• The woman who hits Richard with her car (while he is on foot), and is flabbergasted that anyone could possibly think that this is her fault, and can’t be bothered with the time it takes just to make sure he’s okay.
• The woman crying in the grocery store because people don’t like the salads that she makes. No, really. She’s in there.
• The guy who answers the phone when Richard calls to order a pizza, and almost immediately launches in to a list of EVERY SINGLE topping the pizza place offers without even being asked. Really: who doesn’t know what choices there are for pizza toppings?
• The second 911 operator (starting on page 61) who is incredibly insulting to Richard, calls him “Dick,” and accuses Richard of making a prank call.
• The movie star who owns a helicopter but not a television, and somehow magically knows the right way to help a horse get out of a hole. (Oh, by the way, did I mention that Richard has a sinkhole growing in his yard, and one morning he looks out the window to see a horse just hanging out in it, and so the next many pages are devoted to people – including this yes-helicopter/no-TV movie star – trying to get the horse out? Why the heck is there a horse in a sinkhole in Richard’s yard?)

And no, these aren’t all of the ludicrous characters I came across in my 104 pages; this is just a sampling.

Who on earth are these people? And why does every single one of them lack the power of normal, meaningful conversation? And why is there a horse in a sinkhole in Richard’s yard?

Can people act like this? – sure. But every interaction Richard has is like this. What this leads us to is a troubling fact about This Book: None of the characters in it are people – they’re vehicles. They’re simply a bizarre, shallow cast of figures that Homes created in order to convey her message.

This Book isn’t a cohesive, meaningful story. It is a string of absurd, empty, improbable situations and characters who are blatantly nothing more than thin veils attempting to vainly cover Homes’ true motive for writing this book, which she herself tells us point-blank in the book’s fourth-wall-breaking title: Homes wants to “save our lives,” apparently.

Thanks, Homes, but I’ll pass on your salvation.