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Title: Things You Should Know : A Collection of Stories by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0060520132 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.64
Rating: 5
Summary: Brutal, Honest, Disturbing and Brilliant
Comment: Not for the delicate minded, A.M. Homes returns after a twelve year absence with a collection of short stories that show the human condition rubbed raw to the bone.These are not happy people, but so compelling in their various life crisis' that you can't help but feel like you're sucked into a vacuum. Two in particular are just plain brilliant: The first about a woman who's a shape shifter, and the second an imagined account of life for the former First Lady Nancy Reagan as she copes with her husbands alzheimer condition. These last two stories alone are worth the price of the book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great stuff, if you have the strength for it
Comment: I feel a little sorry for people who think of themselves as intellectuals but don't know how to read a book. This is a collection of stories about how little we can ever be prepared for what life throws up in our faces, so it is logical that several characters have this common trait: the obsession with being prepared for what we can never prepare for. ...
There's an essential bluntness to Homes's writing. There always has been. She writes like a surgeon performing triage. She opens up her characters vulnerabilities for examination. And she has a wicked sense of humor. But her stories are the kind that will make some uncomfortable. Not everyone's cup of tea, but isn't that what writing literature is meant to be?
Rating: 3
Summary: The Underbelly of Suburbia
Comment: In her follow-up short story collection to 1990's THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS, A.M. Homes is still up to her own tricks, taking an almost sadistic delight in showing us the darker side of human nature and relationships in the perversely dangerous safety of suburbia. With the deftness of a knife-sharpener, Ms. Homes always manages to infuse just the right amount of humor in the flattest and most sober of situtions, making the reader want to laugh out-loud just because it is so unexpected.
In THE CHINESE LESSON a Caucasian man married to a Chinese woman keeps tabs on his senile mother-in-law with the help of a computer chip and tracking device which maps out precisely where she is at all times.
RAFT IN WATER, FLOATING tells the story of a young anorexic woman who lies out in a pool all day oblivious to everything around her. As her parents' marriage falls apart, she is visited by a very unusual guest.
In GEORGICA, the victim of a serious accident tries to get pregnant on the shores of a beach using the most unorthodox method after she breaks up with her fiance.
REMEDY tells the story of a career woman whose marriage is falling apart. Desperate for support from her parents, she returns home only to find that her home is occupied by a mysterious fitness guru whom her parents are completely enamoured with.
In ROCKETS AROUND THE MOON, a best friend narrates the changes that his pal's seemingly normal and ideal household goes through after the father is the perpetrator of a car accident, killing a child.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM is abnormal in its portrayal of a relatively compassionate married couple despite the husband's suicidal ideation. The man cannot understand why his driven emergency-room doctor wife stays with him and tries to drive her away. "I'm having an affair", "No, you're not!" A very poignant ending. This is probably my favorite story in the collection.
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW is the very short title story about a boy who feels his life is incomplete because while he was out sick, his teacher passed out a list of THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW, but often aren't aware of because they seem so foolish. Despite its brevity, it seems to lend a theme to the collection, presenting a subtle urgency to the body of stories.
THE WHIZ KIDS tells a story of adolescent sexuality as embodied in two boys. I really was not a fan of this story at all. It was too short to lend any understanding to its abberance.
In DO NOT DISTURB, a couple finds that paradoxically, the woman's diagnosis with cancer only accentuates the flaws in their marriage as opposed to bringing them closer together.
THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS SUNNY AND BRIGHT revives the mysterious visitor from RAFT IN WATER, FLOATING and chronicles her day and relationships as she goes about her job as a forensic architect and visits her mother in a nursing home.
THE FORMER FIRST LADY AND THE FOOTBALL PLAYER is a meditation on what life must be like for Nancy Reagan as she struggles to come to terms with her husband, who is a mere shell of what he once was.
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW is a very elegant, carefully-composed collection. A.M. Homes is a masterful and articulate writer who pays attention to details. The problem, however, is perhaps that she ignores the bigger picture. Eighty percent of these stories deal with identical characters: submissive husbands whose marriages to driven career women are falling apart in the soft environs of a suburban neighborhood. Shocking expressions of sexuality, especially in adolescents, usually figure in. While each of the stories certainly has its moments, each one is also fairly anti-climactic: the stories could virtually be described as Domestic Decay Version 2.0, 3.0, etc. This is good if you are looking to see how various life situations effect dysfunctional relationships. I just wish there had been more substance. Nonetheless, the collection is appropriately titled, because within each one of these stories is buried the THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW.
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Title: Safety of Objects by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0060564512 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The End Of Alice by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0684827107 Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Collected Stories by Clare Boylan ISBN: 1582432619 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.50 |
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Title: Music for Torching by A. M. Homes ISBN: 068817762X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Jack (Vintage Contemporaries) by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0679732217 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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