The characters in this book are quirky and utterly hilarious. Set in LA, the people tend to be blunt, if not outright rude. Richard is such a likeable character, despite the fact it’s pretty clear he’s been behaving like a bit of an ass for going on ten years. But the important point is that we can see why. It makes sense, and he’s not behaving that way because he is an asshole, but because he’s afraid, and miserable and he doesn’t know what else to do. In some respects, Richard reminded me of my father. He wants to do well, but he just can’t quite figure out what it is that other people might need. Despite many laugh out loud moments, the serious undertones in this novel are unmistakeable. Richard, in mending his relationship with his teenage son, “feels the full weight of the years he missed, the gap between how he is and how he wishes he could be…” Homes expertly reveals our common vulnerabilities, unashamedly and candidly puts emotion under the microscope. A.M. Homes skillfully circles and tugs at the question of what it means to live in flawed, fragile, hungry human bodies . . . DAYS OF AWE is sliced through with Homes’s dark humor . . . one wants to read passages of a Homes story aloud because they are so fine . . . DAYS OF AWE feels like the part of the day when the sun is about to go down and the light is brighter while the shadows are darker. Everything has a sharp edge, is strikingly beautiful and suddenly also a little menacing.” —Ramona Ausubel, The New York Times Book Review Often I have a title before I start to work—but this time, I wasn’t sure. I finished the novel and gave it to my agent who said, I love it, what’s it called. And I blurted out, “This Book Will Save Your Life,” which I hope holds true. It saved Richard Novak’s life—he is far happier and more fulfilled at the end.

He gives away new cars, pays for his maid's hip replacement, sends the weary housewife to a spa. "This is the person he wants to be," Homes writes. "He wants to be able to do this for others, strangers, it doesn't matter who, and he wants to be able to do it for himself." His Good Samaritan impulse also inspires a series of impromptu rescue operations: A horse is trapped in a sinkhole, a hostage is trapped in a trunk, a woman is trapped in a bad marriage. These episodes are mildly amusing (for 15 minutes, he's a national celebrity, a punch line on Letterman), but because Richard is so imperturbable and his success so firmly guaranteed, the scenes never develop any real suspense. Middle-aged Richard Novak experiences diffuse intense pain and ends up in an Emergency Department, he also has a massive sinkhole growing next to his well-to-do home in LA. Sadly this book goes nowhere. At all. Things happen. There are even plot resolutions. But they're so artfully hidden, so well-buried under that pile of prose that you only realise that something has happened hours later. And that robs the book of any closure. I've had a few weeks to think about it and figure out the story. And I still feel like someone tore out the last chapter of the copy I read. It's just left me with unresolved frustated feelings for the book. Which is ironic, given the subject matter.

READERS GUIDE

Rich in humanity and humor . . . Homes combines an unfussy candor with a deliciously droll, quirky wit. . . . Her energy and urgency become infectious.”– USA Today So will this book actually save your life? Probably not. But if you read it, you will learn a few things: That it’s never too late to try again, relationships can be mended, pain can be felt and endured, that the world is full of wonderful people and wonderful experiences if only you open yourself up to the possibilities. These are things we forget when we are suffering. We tend to withdraw, hide ourselves away, retreat into ourselves and allow our pain to engulf us. For me this book was a much needed reminder that life does go on, if only you live it. Homes…has the ability to scare you half to death….[She is] devastating…a very dangerous writer.”— Washington Post Book World

With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties through stories about unexpected situations.” — Time The movie star laughs. "I'll tell you a secret," he says. "But you have to swear not to tell anyone." kitapta çok komik bir yer var. ünlü senaristle huzurevine gidip bir adamı bir günlüğüne dışarı çıkarıp gezdiriyorlar. richard’ın senaristin babası sandığı adam meğer kendini iyi hisset projesi gibi huzurevinde seçip baktığın biriymiş. böyle bir sistem bile var. inanılmaz. I am truly a writer of fiction, working from my imagination, making up events and characters. At the same time, perhaps more than other books I’ve written, This Book Will Save Your Life is philosophically very much in line with what I try to put forward in my own life. A confession: I am that person who talks to strangers in elevators, who stops crying people on the street and asks if they’re OK, who offers to help an old person home with their groceries. And I find that my offer of help is equally as often accepted as it is rejected. Throughout the book we see Richard come to life, and there is some nice writing in their about the nature of suffering:I read this in a couple of sittings, but I'm on some kind of mad reading binge right now, about a book a day, so that may not mean much. neyse sonuçta kahramanın sonsuz yolculuğu misali richard’la oğlu ben’in yolculuklarına, kavgalarına, yüzleşmelerine şahit oluyoruz. baştaki saçmalıklar devam ediyor ve bu kez de yangınla final yapıyoruz. Richard and Cynthia are both trying to reclaim their lives. In what ways do they help each other? How are their efforts similar? Who is more successful? A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. An absolute masterpiece . . . Homes writes ecstatically, and like no one else.”– The Philadelphia Inquirer

It is also important to me to write books that are funny—darkly funny. I find daily life to be surrealistic. The split between what we’re able to accomplish in mechanical terms combined with human behavior and a kind of flawed social structure—e.g., an automated voice versus a “live” person, and so on—all tells me a lot about who we (Americans) are as people and who we are becoming. And despite being perpetually hopeful about what we are each capable of, I remain often stunned by what I see. In the title story, a Holocaust survivor taps into a theme of the collection when he describes the way people hold the history of previous generations inside them. ‘We carry it with us, not just in our grandmother’s silver,’ he says, ‘but in our bodies, the cells of our hearts.’” — Wall Street Journal As a memoirist, A.M. Homes takes a characteristically fierce and fearless approach. And she has a whopper of a personal story to tell.”– Chicago Tribunezambra, “okumamak”ta a.m.homes’dan çok bahsediyor. bu kitap benim okumamak sonrası alışveriş listemdendi. ama yanlış kitapla mı başladım bilmiyorum. zaten irem (merixien) de yazmıştı yorumunda. beni de sarmadı. Richard goes outside, stands with his feet on the edge of the hole—it is definitely deeper than it was two hours ago. The horse looks up. These stories are remarkable. They are awesomely well-written. In the sense of arousing fear and wonder in the reader they entertain, but what they principally bring us is a sense of recognition . . . Here are all the things that even today, even in our frank outspoken times, we don’t talk about. We think of them punishingly in sleepless nights.” —Ruth Rendell This sunny and disarming story is probably the last thing you would expect from Homes, whose most celebrated work, The End of Alice, is a study of paedophilia across two generations. But she is as fearless and inquisitive about the nature of kindness as she was about child abuse; if anything, this book is braver. Artists and philosophers are forever fretting over the "problem of evil". There's relatively little written about the much more interesting problem of good. Generosity can be powerfully addictive. The real-estate millionaire Zell Kravinsky, for instance, gave away his fortune and then - to the consternation of his family - tried to give away one of his kidneys. What makes us want to help strangers at our own cost and against our own interest? It isn't thanks: do-gooder is a term of abuse. Small acts of inexplicable generosity can be as alarming as they are charming. A friend of mine once found an old man bewildered and freezing in Sefton Park, spent the evening trying to find his house for him and was later arrested for attempted abduction and mugging. Richard Novak is called a freak and attention-seeker, but still keeps on. Homes is brilliant on what the attraction is. She captures the enchantment of generosity - that sense of adventure you get when you step out of your own circle of need into someone else's, and the weird feeling of invulnerability it gives you (at one point Richard ends up in a high-speed car chase with some kidnappers).