This book will save your life - A.M. Homes
Posted on Sep 17, 2008 under contemporary literature | No Comment
Life proves to have this quality of being forgotten and ignored. We take each day for granted, we think it’s ours no matter what, that it has no end and doesn’t ask for anything in return. We weave a cocoon around us that keeps us from the outside world and we “decorate” it with what we think makes it wealthy.
The personal comfort is our final goal, and egocentrism isolates us from what actually lives around us. We build defense walls in order to protect ourselves and we end up alone and cold behind them.
What do we actually do when we look death in the face? How do we defend ourselves then? Where do we hide? And how do we keep on living?
Richard Novak, a wealthy business man in Los Angeles, has to answer these questions, because he has a pain of unknown origin which makes him conscious about the idea that he can die anytime.
Richard is what we call a successful man: he earns money with a minimum effort, he lives a very organized and healthy life, he has a house on the Los Angeles hills, an expensive car, a housekeeper, a nutritionist and a personal trainer.
His visit to the ER changes radically his life and takes him to an adventure that is beyond any reason. Homes’ happenings, narrated in a constant and inflexion free voice, describes a supernatural Los Angeles, rotten and hilarious, with traditional typologies of characters.
Beside the rich, lonely man, Homes brings up the neurotic and frustrated wife, the modest cinema star, the philosophical immigrant, the famous writer and some other supporting characters on their way to success in this movie center.
The emptiness in Richard’s life reflects in that hole next to his house, the artificial silence that he’s fighting for, in his flavourless diet that he’s imposing on himself. But life asks for noise, for voices and flavours, and Richard is trying to gather around him people, attention and food.
Homes doesn’t point the finger at the flaws that deform the charming American high society’s face but keeps his distance and tells impartially all the eccentricities of the sick world Richard lives in. The reader has nothing to do but to observe, to analyze and to judge.
I have to say that I liked the cover of this book; I think it was carefully assembled, under the form of a map with lots of clues that guide you in reading the novel. The symbols on the cover are inspired and intriguing.
Although it has a self help title, This book will save your life will not change anything in your existence. It’s a shocking book; it won’t shake you and will not give any answers for a more fulfilling life. But it is a book that will make you think through and be grateful for the life you have.
Written by Ana-Maria