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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
Was a good start but had just too much going on... a crazed brother, a murdered wife, multiple sex partners, a bunch of super well behaved children with no teenage tantrums and a pair of adopted parents... makes you wonder if there was a moral to the story... Was there?
I couldn't put this book down. You wouldn't know that if you know how long I've been reading it, but the truth is that I had to force myself to put it down many times. The book is a look int a dysfunctional family that falls into even more dysfunction right before your eyes. The good news is that not all dysfunction is bad dysfunction. The book makes you fall in love with characters that you want to hate. It really just gives you all the feels.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is absolutely the best book I've read all year. I wasn't expecting it to be heartwarming or uplifting in any way, but it really was. It's very dark and yet profoundly optimistic, which is an important tone not many writers are able to strike. It's very much a book where a middle aged man has the kind of revelations about morality and the human condition that most girls have at about age 12, but it was really interesting to see Harry come to terms with how shallow his understanding of the world had previously been. I feel like this is the opposite of books about women written by men- this man, written by a woman, has so much more depth and humanity than most male protagonists by male authors. I truly LOVED the found family narrative, and the religious themes were really interesting too. It makes sense for the family to be Jewish, since one of the major themes is intergenerational trauma and the cascading effects of irreparable atrocities. I was a bit worried that the South Africa plot was going to devolve into white savior neocolonial bullshit, but I think it was handled really well. Tying in that global perspective makes it clear that the issues at play between the characters- how to care for each other, what we owe one another, how to bridge huge gaps in lived experience, how to move forward from harms that can't be undone- are also extremely important on the political level. I will say, I was definitely missing a lot of the nuance with the stuff about Nixon and China. I have no doubt that it was really masterfully done and would add a new layer of meaning to the book if you were of an older generation or had done a lot of research on the topic. Overall, this is definitely not a thriller or true crime story- it is a long, exhaustively detailed family narrative, so if you're not into that genre of litfic you'll probably be bored out of your mind. I loved it though, and I'm looking forward to reading Homes's other work in the future.
Oh, footnote, the class context of this is absolutely insane. The family is essentially set for life with no jobs and no worries whatsoever about paying for a lavish lifestyle, which requires a bit of suspension of disbelief for the average person. There really are people who live like this, though, and I thought maybe the story was pointing out that while money is the prerequisite for many, many, many aspects of American life (healthcare, education, therapy, religion, following one's dreams), wealth alone doesn't make life worth living. After all, the money came from George, who was famously an evil, violent malcontent- it didn't make him happy, and it didn't prevent him from harming other people or, ultimately, experiencing harm himself. Maybe it's just the NYC metro area setting, or the fatal car accidents, but I was getting wafts of The Great Gatsby off of this book, which made me inclined to think that we're supposed to be perceiving the wealth of the characters as a symptom of wider societal malaise rather than a morally neutral plot circumstance.
Oh, footnote, the class context of this is absolutely insane. The family is essentially set for life with no jobs and no worries whatsoever about paying for a lavish lifestyle, which requires a bit of suspension of disbelief for the average person. There really are people who live like this, though, and I thought maybe the story was pointing out that while money is the prerequisite for many, many, many aspects of American life (healthcare, education, therapy, religion, following one's dreams), wealth alone doesn't make life worth living. After all, the money came from George, who was famously an evil, violent malcontent- it didn't make him happy, and it didn't prevent him from harming other people or, ultimately, experiencing harm himself. Maybe it's just the NYC metro area setting, or the fatal car accidents, but I was getting wafts of The Great Gatsby off of this book, which made me inclined to think that we're supposed to be perceiving the wealth of the characters as a symptom of wider societal malaise rather than a morally neutral plot circumstance.
The book is long and has some ups and downs, but overall I liked the protoganist.
A witting and amusing look at a modern family - in this case, what it had been and then what it evolved into. Just a little too contrived in places, but some great characters and a very enjoyable read over all.
The stage is set in the opening pages: Harry, the narrator, is kissed by Jane, the wife of his brother, George, on Thanksgiving Day. Soon thereafter and unrelated to the adulterous kiss, George has an automobile accident that kills two people, though their son, Ricardo, escapes relatively unharmed. George has a mental breakdown and is hospitalized. In the meantime, Harry and Jane continue their affair. George leaves the hospital on his own, returns home, and bashes Jane's head in with a lamp, which eventually leads to her death. Harry's wife, Claire, divorces him.
It then falls on Harry to pick up the pieces of his family and move on with his life. There is no driving plot device throughout the rest of the novel, nothing to be resolved, no mystery lingering: it is just Harry trying to live and make a life for himself and his brother's children, Nate and Ashley.
The novel is a meandering picaresque, with Harry encountering one crisis or adventure after another: sexual escapades via the web, losing his job as a history professor and Nixon scholar, editing a collection of recently discovered short stories that Nixon wrote, dealing with Ashley's problems in school, bringing Ricardo into the family at the behest of Nate and Ashley, taking all three children to South Africa to celebrate Nate's bar mitzvah, and sundry other strange yet strangely enthralling episodes.
Harry is a brilliantly drawn character, and his story and that of his family and how he survives and even thrives after the tragedy of Jane's murder is compelling. This is a novel that, after the opening scenes, might seem as if it would lose steam, but I found myself completely engrossed from beginning to end with Harry's adventures and misadventures. I thoroughly, to my surprise, enjoyed this novel.
It then falls on Harry to pick up the pieces of his family and move on with his life. There is no driving plot device throughout the rest of the novel, nothing to be resolved, no mystery lingering: it is just Harry trying to live and make a life for himself and his brother's children, Nate and Ashley.
The novel is a meandering picaresque, with Harry encountering one crisis or adventure after another: sexual escapades via the web, losing his job as a history professor and Nixon scholar, editing a collection of recently discovered short stories that Nixon wrote, dealing with Ashley's problems in school, bringing Ricardo into the family at the behest of Nate and Ashley, taking all three children to South Africa to celebrate Nate's bar mitzvah, and sundry other strange yet strangely enthralling episodes.
Harry is a brilliantly drawn character, and his story and that of his family and how he survives and even thrives after the tragedy of Jane's murder is compelling. This is a novel that, after the opening scenes, might seem as if it would lose steam, but I found myself completely engrossed from beginning to end with Harry's adventures and misadventures. I thoroughly, to my surprise, enjoyed this novel.
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
There is a hyper reality that American authors seem to excel in. This is where most of the humour comes from and the silliness, almost the typical American suburban novel. But what I wasn't expecting was the community, the hodgepodge of people coming together mostly through tragedy, or weird sexscapades. Harry Silver slowly creeps into your own world, at first the book is awkward filled missteps, unattractive sex, and bad life decisions one after the other. But the first 100 pages are really just a pallet cleanser, then Harry finds his feet and you become part of his community. The interest Harry has with Nixon is an interesting prism to view the American dream, the hypocrisy and promise of it, and it gave Harry a man lost in time feel the 1960s and 2010s mixing into one. But what I liked is how the children are not plot devices, orphans to feel sorry for, to pull at the heart string, they are their own complicated little beings.
This book was an unexpected tapestry of different people and quirks.
This book was an unexpected tapestry of different people and quirks.
“as much as one might desire change, one has to be willing to take a risk, to free-fall, to fail, and that you’ve got to let go of the past”
If there was ever a novel in serious need of plot speed-bumps such as weather descriptions, it’s this one. You would think that in a 500 page novel the author would take her time and let things unravel slowly. No, not Homes. It was a crazy ride in a convertible with Homes behind the wheel and me sitting in the back shouting over the wind
“Homes, where are we going? Are we even going anywhere??”
And Homes would shout back
“What? I can’t hear you! We’re going too fast!”
On the first page we meet Harry Silver who seduces or is seduced by his brother’s wife, depending on how you look at it. Meanwhile, his brother, a big shot TV producer, goes through a red light and kills a family. He then goes mad, although it’s unclear actually whether killing that family was the cause of his madness or just one of its effects. He then kills his wife after having caught her with Harry. Don’t worry, this all happens on the first five pages on the novel, after which a billion other things happen, pretty much anything you can think of, short of alien abduction.
It’s funny how all these things just happen to Harry, who is really just minding his own business, trying to take care of his brother’s half-orphaned children. Yet, he seems to attract the crazy, he goes to the shop and meets a woman who invites herself over and then practically sexually assaults him. Or he meets some crazy guy in hospital who had lots of money. When the guy dies Harry finds wads of banknotes in his pockets. Now, how did that happen? Surely, Harry did not put them there himself, for Harry is a good guy, he will have you know. Things just seem to happen to him. Absurd, ridiculous things. Over the top, grotesque things.
You can’t take this novel at face value, because it’s impossible to suspend your disbelief for all those 500 pages. It’s easy to just take it as a satire full of caricatures and irony. It starts off bleakly; pages are populated by mean characters doing nasty things but then gradually everything becomes a little nicer until it’s full on rainbows and unicorns. For Harry is a good guy, and good things happen to good people. Eventually.
Or is he really a good guy? I’d like to propose a slightly different interpretation of this novel. Let’s remember Harry is the narrator here, and as all first person narrators are he is subjective. Let’s go even further, let’s say he is unreliable. After all, Harry’s great hero is Nixon, man who in his own mind was a paragon of virtue but really just created and bended the world to his liking...
That money that just magically ended up in Harry’s pockets? When I first read it, I believed he had no idea, because Harry is just such a harmless, affable guy. But then I remembered how he described that scene at the party when the accountant came up to him and said something Harry didn’t like, and then the accountant was on floor holding his jaw. Harry never tells us he hit the accountant, yet the accountant is on the floor. And if we remember how Harry describes the scene when his brother kills his wife, it looks a little dodgy as well:
"Maybe I heard that part—the dog barking. Or maybe he didn’t ring the bell and maybe the dog didn’t bark. Maybe George took the spare key from inside the fake rock in the garden by the door, and, like an intruder, he came silently into his own house. Maybe he came upstairs thinking he’d crawl into his bed, but his spot was taken. I don’t know how long he stood there. I don’t know how long he waited before he lifted the lamp from her side of the bed and smashed it onto her head. That’s when I woke up.
[…]I stand facing him, wearing his pajamas. We are the same, like mimes, we have the same gestures, the same faces, the family chin, my father’s brow, the same mismatched selves."
Often Harry reminds us that his brother George was the bully, and he, Harry, was one of his victims. Yet, there are stories that his relatives mention where Harry did horrible things. He always then corrects them saying it was his brother George, not him. And we believe him, of course, for Harry is a nice fellow.
So nice, we are in fact shocked that his wife leaves him (fair enough, he did have an affair) and then pays him a lot of money to never contact her again. Now, why would you do that to such a lovely chap? But then let’s remember that one scene, where Harry’s wife reacts to Harry’s revelations that Jane (the brother’s wife) might have the hots for him.
“You were in her way and she was trying to get past you and not get to you,” Claire said. I didn’t mention that I felt the head of my cock pressing against my sister-in-law’s hips, her thighs pressed together. “Only you would think she was making a pass,” Claire said, disgusted. “Only me,” I repeated. “Only me.”
So possibly this wasn’t the first time? Possibly Claire knows something about Harry that Harry won’t tells us?
Now, let’s look at the children. They are just the regular zombified American pre-teens before Harry steps on the scene, but then thanks to his tender love and care they turn into these precocious, wonderful little things. Or at least that’s how Harry presents it to us. The kids don’t even seem to mind that he contributed to their mother’s death in a way. Harry can’t help it, you see. Women just want him. Wherever he goes they want him – he just happens to go on the internet random hook up site. Because that’s a normal thing to do when you ex-lover was murdered before your very eyes by your own brother. Just go online and set up a series of lunchtime fuck dates. Yet, when Harry describes it seems like just the thing to do. The book happens so fast I had no time to think and it was only after I finished reading that I thought: wait a minute, that’s actually pretty messed up.
So when everything starts going great, let’s assume it’s another one of Harry’s delusions. Not entirely made up, just slanted, because Harry sees what he chooses to see and presents it to us the way he wants to present it. But there are cracks in his story and sometimes they show, like when he suddenly suffers from guilt pangs over some murdered girl who had nothing to do with him.
I think this interpretation (for which I can’t take the sole credit or almost any credit at all, because it was discussed at our book club) makes ‘May We Be Forgiven’ a more exciting and interesting read, even if this is not what A.M. Homes intended at all. But we live in the post-modern times and this book now belongs to us, the readers, and we will do with it what we like.
“Homes, where are we going? Are we even going anywhere??”
And Homes would shout back
“What? I can’t hear you! We’re going too fast!”
On the first page we meet Harry Silver who seduces or is seduced by his brother’s wife, depending on how you look at it. Meanwhile, his brother, a big shot TV producer, goes through a red light and kills a family. He then goes mad, although it’s unclear actually whether killing that family was the cause of his madness or just one of its effects. He then kills his wife after having caught her with Harry. Don’t worry, this all happens on the first five pages on the novel, after which a billion other things happen, pretty much anything you can think of, short of alien abduction.
It’s funny how all these things just happen to Harry, who is really just minding his own business, trying to take care of his brother’s half-orphaned children. Yet, he seems to attract the crazy, he goes to the shop and meets a woman who invites herself over and then practically sexually assaults him. Or he meets some crazy guy in hospital who had lots of money. When the guy dies Harry finds wads of banknotes in his pockets. Now, how did that happen? Surely, Harry did not put them there himself, for Harry is a good guy, he will have you know. Things just seem to happen to him. Absurd, ridiculous things. Over the top, grotesque things.
You can’t take this novel at face value, because it’s impossible to suspend your disbelief for all those 500 pages. It’s easy to just take it as a satire full of caricatures and irony. It starts off bleakly; pages are populated by mean characters doing nasty things but then gradually everything becomes a little nicer until it’s full on rainbows and unicorns. For Harry is a good guy, and good things happen to good people. Eventually.
Or is he really a good guy? I’d like to propose a slightly different interpretation of this novel. Let’s remember Harry is the narrator here, and as all first person narrators are he is subjective. Let’s go even further, let’s say he is unreliable. After all, Harry’s great hero is Nixon, man who in his own mind was a paragon of virtue but really just created and bended the world to his liking...
That money that just magically ended up in Harry’s pockets? When I first read it, I believed he had no idea, because Harry is just such a harmless, affable guy. But then I remembered how he described that scene at the party when the accountant came up to him and said something Harry didn’t like, and then the accountant was on floor holding his jaw. Harry never tells us he hit the accountant, yet the accountant is on the floor. And if we remember how Harry describes the scene when his brother kills his wife, it looks a little dodgy as well:
"Maybe I heard that part—the dog barking. Or maybe he didn’t ring the bell and maybe the dog didn’t bark. Maybe George took the spare key from inside the fake rock in the garden by the door, and, like an intruder, he came silently into his own house. Maybe he came upstairs thinking he’d crawl into his bed, but his spot was taken. I don’t know how long he stood there. I don’t know how long he waited before he lifted the lamp from her side of the bed and smashed it onto her head. That’s when I woke up.
[…]I stand facing him, wearing his pajamas. We are the same, like mimes, we have the same gestures, the same faces, the family chin, my father’s brow, the same mismatched selves."
Often Harry reminds us that his brother George was the bully, and he, Harry, was one of his victims. Yet, there are stories that his relatives mention where Harry did horrible things. He always then corrects them saying it was his brother George, not him. And we believe him, of course, for Harry is a nice fellow.
So nice, we are in fact shocked that his wife leaves him (fair enough, he did have an affair) and then pays him a lot of money to never contact her again. Now, why would you do that to such a lovely chap? But then let’s remember that one scene, where Harry’s wife reacts to Harry’s revelations that Jane (the brother’s wife) might have the hots for him.
“You were in her way and she was trying to get past you and not get to you,” Claire said. I didn’t mention that I felt the head of my cock pressing against my sister-in-law’s hips, her thighs pressed together. “Only you would think she was making a pass,” Claire said, disgusted. “Only me,” I repeated. “Only me.”
So possibly this wasn’t the first time? Possibly Claire knows something about Harry that Harry won’t tells us?
Now, let’s look at the children. They are just the regular zombified American pre-teens before Harry steps on the scene, but then thanks to his tender love and care they turn into these precocious, wonderful little things. Or at least that’s how Harry presents it to us. The kids don’t even seem to mind that he contributed to their mother’s death in a way. Harry can’t help it, you see. Women just want him. Wherever he goes they want him – he just happens to go on the internet random hook up site. Because that’s a normal thing to do when you ex-lover was murdered before your very eyes by your own brother. Just go online and set up a series of lunchtime fuck dates. Yet, when Harry describes it seems like just the thing to do. The book happens so fast I had no time to think and it was only after I finished reading that I thought: wait a minute, that’s actually pretty messed up.
So when everything starts going great, let’s assume it’s another one of Harry’s delusions. Not entirely made up, just slanted, because Harry sees what he chooses to see and presents it to us the way he wants to present it. But there are cracks in his story and sometimes they show, like when he suddenly suffers from guilt pangs over some murdered girl who had nothing to do with him.
I think this interpretation (for which I can’t take the sole credit or almost any credit at all, because it was discussed at our book club) makes ‘May We Be Forgiven’ a more exciting and interesting read, even if this is not what A.M. Homes intended at all. But we live in the post-modern times and this book now belongs to us, the readers, and we will do with it what we like.