This Book Will Save Your Life
by A.M. Homes
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of This Book Will Save Your Life.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 935)
Read in September, 2007
I listened to the audiobook from Audible.com.
I very much enjoyed this novel. It was laugh out loud funny in places.
Publisher's Summary
Since her debut in 1989, A.M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years.
Rich...more
I very much enjoyed this novel. It was laugh out loud funny in places.
Publisher's Summary
Since her debut in 1989, A.M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years.
Rich...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Wow. Wow. wow. This book sneaks up on you - it starts out really strong, and then only gets better.
We are introducted to Richard Novak, a reclusive, wealthy middle-aged man living in Los Angeles who pretty much doesn't need to leave his house anymore - he has his trainer, his housekeeper and his nutritionist to keep him going. But then he has an attack of pain that causes him to call 911 and to come in contact with a series of people. Next there is a mysterious sink hole in front of his ho...more
We are introducted to Richard Novak, a reclusive, wealthy middle-aged man living in Los Angeles who pretty much doesn't need to leave his house anymore - he has his trainer, his housekeeper and his nutritionist to keep him going. But then he has an attack of pain that causes him to call 911 and to come in contact with a series of people. Next there is a mysterious sink hole in front of his ho...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
This is the twelfth book I read on my commute. I started it after getting back from vacation in August, and while I was on vacation I read two other books - The Plutonium Blonde and Adventure! Vol. 1 - but those don't count as commute books since I read them on the beach.
This Book is almost a prototype for what I think of when I think "modern lit" - not much of a plot, just slice of life stuff about how ordinary people relate and get by. This Book has some characters who are a li...more
This Book is almost a prototype for what I think of when I think "modern lit" - not much of a plot, just slice of life stuff about how ordinary people relate and get by. This Book has some characters who are a li...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
everyone with a heart
The middle-aged protagonist Richard Nowak has had what he believes is a brush with death; this leads to a mid-life crisis. This is not a story we haven't heard before--in fact, A.M. Homes is flirting with some real cliche in the subject matter of her book. But it manages to be completely unexpected, anyway.
Bizarre things happen to Richard Nowak. They will make you laugh.
The characters in This Book... are mostly described without...more
Bizarre things happen to Richard Nowak. They will make you laugh.
The characters in This Book... are mostly described without...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 2007
Straightforward and unfancy, the language of this novel is perfectly consistent with the protagonist's inner life. Unlike middle-aged men at center stage of many other contemporary novels, Richard Novak has *not* been living the examined life. Indeed, he has walled himself off from his own emotional and sensual experiences until, one day, "the pain" hits him, starting "as a knotty cramp in his back, a strange tightening from his gut up into his chest" (3). The pain is the...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2006
This Book Will Save Your Life begins with Richard Novak, a wealthy Los Angeleno, having a health scare that sends him to the emergency room. The trauma causes Richard to look at the world and his outward success differently and he begins to make connections with the people he encounters--the man who sells him donuts, a woman he sees crying in the produce section, a neighbor he had never talked to--and with the people that he has spent a great deal of his adult life trying to avoid--his parents, ...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in January, 2007
I found this book in the belongings of my best friend who passed away in Nov. of 2006. She kept it around as a joke; she was dying of cancer. I read the book this January, to see what it was all about, noting that it was authored by one of my faves - A.M. Homes. It was ubsurdly unique timing. The book saved my life in a sense, at least saved my spirit. It tells the story of a man lost in the day-to-day routine of his scheduled life, a man who long ago set his feelings aside about things. It is t...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
My life was not saved, but I was mildly entertained...I have a theory about the book, but if you are going to read it maybe you shouldn't read any further (WHITNEY).
OK--here's what I think. I have read some reviews of the book that criticize Homes for not developing characters, being too free with cliches, using L.A. stereotypes, being fuzzy with the time... I think Richard died at the beginning of the novel and this is his death trip. It's all one big dying dream. Richard's story is not me...more
OK--here's what I think. I have read some reviews of the book that criticize Homes for not developing characters, being too free with cliches, using L.A. stereotypes, being fuzzy with the time... I think Richard died at the beginning of the novel and this is his death trip. It's all one big dying dream. Richard's story is not me...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
Most of the people in these fiction books I read are crap. Beyond just crap they are idiotic or morally depraved people who consistently make bad choices. My empathy starts at zero and goes to negative zero. Usually it is the aliens, ghosts, and plot twists, that keeps me interested in spite of myself. It is that whole watching a train wreck thing. These people are straight out of Jerry springer and The Real World, and Halloween.
So I was glad when I find a book that while the people are wei...more
So I was glad when I find a book that while the people are wei...more
Like this review?
yes
1 comments
Read in March, 2008
This book is fast, funny, and random. It’s the story of a man who experiences about ten years of life in about three months. He’s essentially catching up with the time he has lost since leaving his wife and son. This is a simple premise that I love, and it makes for an interesting amalgamation of events, people, and feelings. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I think it should be mentioned that underneath the somewhat unrealistic plot of this novel, which by the sounds of it some people ca...more
I think it should be mentioned that underneath the somewhat unrealistic plot of this novel, which by the sounds of it some people ca...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
This is a book of snapshots; stolen moments; quick and pithily written and yes, I guess it could save your life.
Richard Novak is a very rich man. He is also a recluse in LA, seeing only his housekeeper, his nutritionist and his personal trainer. Until he ends up in the ER one night with inexplicable pain and a sinkhole starts to suck his house into the ground.
This is the story, in random but beautiful chunks, of Richard’s journey back into humanity via, fake doctors, meditation ret...more
Richard Novak is a very rich man. He is also a recluse in LA, seeing only his housekeeper, his nutritionist and his personal trainer. Until he ends up in the ER one night with inexplicable pain and a sinkhole starts to suck his house into the ground.
This is the story, in random but beautiful chunks, of Richard’s journey back into humanity via, fake doctors, meditation ret...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
In the latter of her two literary epochs (the first being characterized by gritty, hyper-sexualized works like Jack and The End of Alice), A.M. Homes has written about slightly absurd things that happen to slightly absurd people. This Book Will Save Your Life fits this mold almost too perfectly: a man's nervous breakdown leads to a series of unusual events, each helping him return his life to good 'ol fashioned American normalcy. That This Book Will Save Your Life is one o...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
I really liked this book. She's a very strong writer. She uses concrete, striking prose to build the story, and isn't prone to excessive use of descriptive adjectives, or relying upon a character's inner dialogue to make it interesting. I love that. The main character was fascinating. I was simultaneously repulsed by and sympathetic to him. The most interesting thing about him was his passivity. He seemed to be on this subverted, modern Odyssey of sorts, but instead of actively pursuing enlighte...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2007
The third book in a row I've read about an older man's late-in-life crisis and reawakening--all three men were also (very hopelessly) in love with their exes--so maybe I'm not being entirely fair to it with a three-star rating. Honestly, this is my kind of beach read: A bit camp and a bit chicken-soup-for-the-yuppie-soul. I'd happily give it to a friend who needs a quick read while coming down from, like, Ulysses or something, but I don't think it will, as the Stephen King blurb on the ba...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
People bored with life
I read the blurb before I began reading this, and expected something along the lines of the Chuck Palahniuk books I've read.
Generally, after reading it, there are similarities between this and Palahniuk. It's about a lone guy in a world which he doesn't quite have a grasp on until something changes, which then goes into a world of different things.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's got a good, interesting storyline, which involves a...more
Generally, after reading it, there are similarities between this and Palahniuk. It's about a lone guy in a world which he doesn't quite have a grasp on until something changes, which then goes into a world of different things.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's got a good, interesting storyline, which involves a...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
people in California experiencing a mid life crisis
This book really let me down from the very beginning. Mainly, it did not save my life one bit. For example, there are very few conceivable ways it could save my life. One, I may be trapped in a room filled with carbon monoxide and the book may be the only conceivable way to prop open a heavy door. Two, I may be attacked by a wild shark and be able to momentarily stun it by throwing the book its way while I escape. That's pretty much it. Though it deals with the mid life crisis this very we...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
This was such a quick read for me, due to the fact that i found it very hard to put it down.
The main character has cut himself off from the world. He works and exercises from home, and only has personal contact with his housemaid....
Until, he thinks hes having THE BIG ONE, which then takes him on this rollercoaster of interaction with the real world, and he begins to open up and befriends strangers, such as the movie star up the street, the famous seclusive writter, anhil the donut shop...more
The main character has cut himself off from the world. He works and exercises from home, and only has personal contact with his housemaid....
Until, he thinks hes having THE BIG ONE, which then takes him on this rollercoaster of interaction with the real world, and he begins to open up and befriends strangers, such as the movie star up the street, the famous seclusive writter, anhil the donut shop...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
I finally finished a book for the first time in months it seems! I am a big A.M. Homes fan and her stuff is best described as disturbing and not the happiest stuff. This book however, was a departure from her usual stuff, although it still had a lot of black humor to it. I felt like I really got to know LA as wel through the book, a place I've never been.
It's all about a 50something guy living in LA who always works from home trading stocks and doesn't interact much with the outside world, i...more
It's all about a 50something guy living in LA who always works from home trading stocks and doesn't interact much with the outside world, i...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Jaded over-achievers
Despite the title, this is not some American sytled guru with the latest self-help book. It is a novel by a.m. Homes which explores the American dream and finds it wanting. The subject of the book is a rich businessman who has everything he could wish for materially but nothing of any real value. Through a health scare and a chance meeting with the owner of a doughnut shop, he finds out how to reconnect with the world and himself. Well written and readable, it is a lighthearted look at what is...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
How could I resist this book, given its commanding title? An entertaining, quick, almost-too-easy read. A wealthy modern-day California guy goes through an upheaval; it begins the day he notices a sink-hole in his yard and needs to be rushed to the hospital for heart issues. It put me in the mindset of Iris Murdoch, but then again, I haven't read her for 20 years, so I might be really off...(ok ok, I'll re-read her).
And really, it did kinda make me want to change my life! In a cotton candy wa...more
And really, it did kinda make me want to change my life! In a cotton candy wa...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
1 comments
