Published: 13/09/2012
ISBN: 9781847087959
Granta Books
178 pages

The Safety Of Objects

A.M. Homes

The stories in The Safety of Objects are both bizarre and believable, very funny but also frightening and sad. A girl’s blonde Barbie doll seduces her teenage brother in an intense episode of erotic obsession; a couple go off the rails and smoke crack while their children are staying with their grandmother; and a lawyer seeks revenge on his boss by urinating into his potted plant every evening.

Homes couldn't be more deliciously named: she kicks over the doll's house and gives suburbanity a good shake

Guardian

The creepiness bubbling under the surface in this book of short stories is redolent of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho... American dreams for fitful, sleepless, suburban nights

The Scotsman

Here are all the things that even in our frank, outspoken times we don't talk about. We think of them punishingly in our sleepless nights ... Remarkable

Ruth Rendell

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.