Published: 13/09/2012
ISBN: 9781847087942
Granta Books
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.

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

The Author

A. M. Homes is the author of the novels,This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers and Jack, and three collections of short stories, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects and the highly acclaimed memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter, as well as the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and the Castle on the Hill. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes frequently on arts and culture for numerous magazines and newspapers. She lives in New York City.