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Title: Music for Torching by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0-688-17762-X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.41 (76 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Dark and Hilarious
Comment: Homes writes the things you think of but never speak aloud. Her novel, 'The End of Alice', was a disturbing and powerful piece of work, and not something I could see the mainstream public reading and remotely enjoying or understanding. 'Music For Torching' is a bit more accessible, but not much. This time around, Homes sets us down smack in the middle of a suburbia seemingly out of hell. Everyone is crazy, nuts, sexually charged and confused...could this be what we all are really like?
The characters are way out there, yet you can somehow identify and relate with them. Suddenly don't like where you live? Just burn down the house! The humor here is different and strange, and not everyone who reads this expecting normality is going to enjoy it. I myself was laughing aloud at many points.
If you enjoy a dark, scathing look at suburban life (I have to liken it a bit to the film 'American Beauty' but more twisted) then this is a book you should pick up immediately. Homes is a talented author and I will be looking forward to everything she writes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Savagely funny and sad underbelly of the American dream...
Comment: A.M. Homes is a gifted writer who makes her readers squirm. In "The End of Alice," she paints a disturbingly twisted portrait of a pedophile. And now, in "Music for Torching," she gives us a savagely funny and sad portrait of the underbelly of suburban life. She has a gift of drawing the reader in, making us love, hate and identify with her characters. Her dialogue is knife sharp with multi-layered meanings, her situations seem real but yet out of proportion and the book reads like a reflection in a distorted fun house mirror.
Paul and Elaine, a married couple in Westchester, are bored and frustrated with their lives. On a whim, they set fire to their house and spend the night in a motel with their two young sons. Instead of this being the ultimate act of freedom for them, however, it is the beginning of an even tighter trap as the house is only damaged, not completely destroyed and they are thrust into a whirlwind of savagely funny and sad relationships with their own children, their neighbors and their respective lovers.
There's violence, graphic sex and moments of internal terror and confusion for Paul and Elaine as their life spins out of control. They are pathetically flawed and yet sympathetic human beings and reflect moods and emotions that we'd rather not admit might lurk under the surface. Ultimately, the book concludes with an senseless act of violence that reminds of some recent lurid headlines. All of this is woven together seamlessly with a story that moves so quickly that it's only after the book was finished and it continued to haunt me that I could look back and see the depth of Ms. Homes' understanding of the simmering volcanic cesspool of human emotions that lie festering under the surface.
This book is uncomfortable to read and not for everybody, but I thought it was excellent and intend to read some of this author's earlier work. Recommended.
Rating: 1
Summary: Torch This Book
Comment: Wow, what a clunker. Unimaginative and filled with the cliches of modern life in the cul de sac, where all children all sullen, all housewives lead lives of pill-fueled quiet desperation, and all husbands play hide the pickle with soccer moms.
I could forgive the hackneyed themes if the writing itself were masterful but it wheezes along with the grace and wit of an upper-level land grant university literary seminar. The best thing about this book is that its memory won't linger with me for any longer than it takes for me to toss it in the dumpster.
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Title: Safety of Objects by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0060564512 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The End Of Alice by A. M. Homes ISBN: 0684827107 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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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 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: In a Country of Mothers (Vintage Contemporaries) by A.M. HOMES ISBN: 0679742433 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 05 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Jesus Saves by Darcey Steinke ISBN: 0802135986 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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