- Published: 04/04/2013
- ISBN: 9781847087263
- 129x20mm
- 368 pages
Music For Torching
A.M. Homes
Paul and Elaine have two boys and a beautiful home, yet they find themselves thoroughly, inexplicably stuck. Obsessed with ‘making things good again’, they spin the quiet terrors of family life into a fantastical frenzy that careers well and truly out of control.
As A.M. Homes’s incendiary novel unfolds, the technicolour hues of the American good life become nearly hallucinogenic: from a strange and hilarious encounter on the floor of the pantry with a Stepford Wife neighbour, to a house-cleaning team in space suits, to a hostage situation at the school. Homes lays bare the foundations of marriage and family life and creates characters outrageously flawed, deeply human and entirely believable.
£8.99
Homes doesn't so much critique suburban American life as shoot it, stab it, chuck it in the boot of her car and drive it into a lake
The Times
There have been very few women writers like Homes
Zadie Smith
The more bizarre things get, the more impressed one is by A.M. Homes's skills as a realist, a portraitist of contemporary life at its most perverse
David Leavitt
From the Same Author
A.M. Homes on Granta.com
Fiction | Granta 143
Days of Awe
A.M. Homes
Read the title story from AM Homes' dazzling new collection of short stories, Days of Awe, available now from Granta Books.
Essays & Memoir | Granta 143
The File: Lost Then Found
A.M. Homes
‘Even for those of us who feel we have integrated our history, there can be fragments, like shrapnel, that push to the surface without warning.’
Art & Photography
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Granta 137
To Live and Die in South Korea
Françoise Huguier & A.M. Homes
‘Blow the candle out, taste the darkness and come back changed.’