The Happy Booker: TGIF

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As Bookdwarf recently pointed out, Michiko has been wildly cranky lately. Yet despite the critic's spite about This Book Will Save Your Life, we still can't wait to read the latest by A.M. Homes, who is a longtime favorite of ours.

Richard Peabody saw Homes read this week at Politics & Prose and sends us this wonderful Friend of the Happy Booker Report to remind us of what we're missing out here beyond the beltway in our suburban pleasuredome. And yes, we do know teaching, deadlines and driving to soccer practice are lame-o excuses, but welcome to our world.

Word to the wise: if you haven't made any plans for Saturday night, don't miss David Mitchell at Politics & Prose tomorrow at 7:30.

FotHB Report—A.M. Homes by Richard Peabody

A.M. Homes returned to D.C. trailing clouds of glory to read at Politics & Prose Wednesday night. She packed the place and had friends and family from all the strata of her life on hand to hear an excerpt from her 5th novel, This Book Will Save Your Life. A book that Stephen King praises as a “generational touchstone,” and about which Baltimore’s own John Waters says, “If Oprah went insane, this might be her favorite book.”

The critics have been piling on Homes for writing “a sunny new novel,” which she went to some lengths to refute. Perhaps writers aren’t allowed to be funny in these grim times, though the novel addresses everything from doughnuts to the coming California apocalypse. (Homes joked, “What will they call it? [after most of it drops off] Ca?”) But seriously, as the mother of three-year-old Juliet (to whom she dedicates the book), and the author of the grim and grimmer End of Alice, about a sexual predator, is it wrongheaded to spend six years writing about a Yuppie putz like Richard Novak? When his life is sucked into a sinkhole along with his house it feels right and just. His life is so devoid of emotional attachments that being forced out of his gilded cage (where he only interacts with his nutritionist, trainer, housekeeper, and masseuse) by a medical emergency and drawn back into the lives of his ex-wife and estranged son Ben, redeems him.

But maybe after you’ve written about dysfunctional couples who’ve burned their house down on a whim, boys masturbating with their sister’s Barbie (and Ken) dolls, and other nightmares of suburban life, you’re not allowed to veer back to anything that smacks of normality? That seems to be what the critics think. The audience at Politics & Prose, however, fell in the aisles laughing at Richard Novak’s plight. Homes has a natural comic gift, plus real range and vision. I don’t think she wants to be boxed in by expectations. She’s already cornered the market on the surreal aspects of suburban living (along with fellow Bethesda Chevy Chase High School alum Julia Slavin). I say allow her the freedom to try something new.

Amy sat signing books and joking with fans for more than an hour afterwards. She showed off photos of Juliet. Talked about the next leg of her tour—out to L.A. where the book is set. And in the end drove off into the night with her family.