I thought A.M Homes’ Music for Torching (late 1990s, I think) was one of the funniest contemporary novels I had ever read. For me, it was like watching a backyard barbecue from an upper-story home down the street turn into a blaze engulfing the entire neighborhood – and laughing all the way through it, even while it scorched my own suburban sensibilities. I mean, it was literary scorched earth. I recommended it to several friends, all of whom were more interested in throwing it on a figurative book-burning pile. I’ve been waiting for Homes to surpass that achievement so I could once again annoy my novel-obsessed friends.
I’ll now be recommending May We Be Forgiven to the same friends and family, and others as well. The main character is a Nixon scholar. Need I say more? Okay, I will. This book reads like literary stand-up comedy, which makes sense now that I’ve learned Homes took courses in stand-up comedy. Many novels continually surprise the reader with what I call the unexpected inflection points. Reader expects character A to turn left. She turns right. Then for several chapters, character A is on a journey to the right. Homes does this several times on a page. On each page. Or so it seems. Imagine being in a demolition derby (for those of you that did not grow up in places like the Tennessee-Georgia border, this is a unique auto “race” during which drivers ram the crap out of each other, the winner is driving the last car that still runs) blindfolded. You just don’t know what’s going to hit you next, or where you’ll end up. Homes’ makes sure you never leave the confines of the pit.
All the while, though, the story has momentum and is clearly moving towards a vanishing point. This is the genius of the work. This poor Nixon scholar pretty much deserves what’s coming to him, based on how the story begins (he beds his crazy brother’s wife, his crazy brother discovers, and his crazy brother kills his wife, after he kills a few others in a car wreck), but redemption, 450 pages later, is a thing of beauty, as he becomes head of a family, caretaker for all the kids who suffer because of his behavior and his brother’s. Along the way, Homes sucks up more bits and pieces of American culture, life in these United States, today than a twister taking its revenge on the New York metropolitan area.
Is there a novelist Homes echoes? To me, perhaps Tom Wolfe, with Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full. The back flap mentions John Irving, The World According to Garp. I would bet that Homes would still be the last car running in the derby, though. The others could never match her quick acceleration page for page, ability to deflect, and keep such crazy occurrences, most surprisingly of all, within a boundary of sanity for the course of the story.
I can’t wait to hear what the friends and family have to say this time around.
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