Amy Michael Homes Orden de los libros (cronológico)

In <i>Dagen van inkeer</i> schrijft A.M. Homes met de voor haar zo kenmerkende humor en compassie over het moderne leven. Bijna dertig jaar na het verschijnen van haar debuutbundel De veiligheid der dingen weet ze ook nu opnieuw de oppervlakkigheid en hypocrisie van Amerika bloot te leggen, zonder daarbij het menselijk aspect uit het oog te verliezen. Zo komen in het titelverhaal twee oude vrienden elkaar weer tegen tijdens een congres over genocide – zowel op spiritueel als fysiek vlak herontdekken ze elkaar en ze vinden troost in aloude tradities. In het satirische 'Een prijs voor iedere speler' wordt een man genomineerd voor het presidentschap terwijl hij boodschappen doet met zijn gezin. En in 'Hallo allemaal' schrijft Homes over een familie die zich volledig richt op uiterlijk vertoon, uit angst om hun gevoelens te moeten onderzoeken. <i>Dagen van inkeer</i> is het eerste nieuwe werk van Homes sinds het bekroonde <i>Vergeef ons</i> en een belangwekkende toevoeging aan het oeuvre van een moedige, visionaire auteur.

On the day that Homes was born in 1961, she was given up for adoption. Thirty years later, out of the blue, Homes was contacted by a lawyer on behalf of her birth mother, and they began to correspond; her biological father contacted her soon after. These two individuals and their effect on the adult Homes are strange and unexpected.

Richard is a middle-aged divorcee trading stock out of his home in Los Angeles. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one, until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world.

As Quentin Crisp used to say, "Don't keep up with the Joneses! <i>Drag them down to your level!</i>" This could be the motto of the suburbanites in A.M. Homes's fourth novel, <i>Music for Torching</i>. Homes has a subtle eye and ear for suburban reality, but beware: she is no mere satirist of what James Joyce called the "muddle crass." Behind each neat, bright lawn, vile lives writhe in darkness. On the surface, Paul and Elaine are conventionally competitive middle-aged, middle-class people with banal yearnings for French doors and a new deck. They have two strapping boys. Their neighbors Pat and George are prodigies of efficient family life. But alone with Elaine, Pat drops the Stepford Wife mask and stages loveless orgies atop the throbbing washer, amid the Downy and Fantastik and Bon Ami. Meanwhile, Paul beds a local wife and a sinister mistress. The nice old man down the street downloads Internet child porn. Local kids join the Boy Scouts and bite off teachers' fingers. It's all about lurid misery and false fronts: a minor character is named Claire Roth, surely alluding to the bitter relationship in Claire Bloom's <i>Leaving a Doll's House</i> and Philip Roth's <i>I Married a Communist</i>. <p> Paul and Elaine first popped up in Homes's collection <i>The Safety of Objects</i>, as a couple having the happiest night of their lives smoking crack while the kids are away. Their happiest night here is when they tip the barbecue and burn their house halfway down. The story proceeds with a nightmare zombie logic from there, with a funny-scary ironic tone. "Paul notices that the color of her eye shadow is Fiction, and her lipstick is called Sheer Fraud.... 'What happened to the dining-room table, Elaine? Why'd you chop it to pieces?'" he wonders. "The damage was irreparable," his wife replies. Homes describes nice people doing not-so-nice deeds in luminous, precise prose way better than Bret Easton Ellis, as well as Joyce Carol Oates, and occasionally within range of John Updike. But Homes is really the evil spawn of Grace Metalious and Quentin Tarantino. <i>--Tim Appelo</i></p>