Uncategorized | January 17, 2006

When Stephen King weighed in for Entertainment Weekly recently with his best books of 2005, his list included–at No. 2–a book that isn’t yet available, but of which King had read an advanced copy. The book? This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes. An interview with Homes, by Michael Piafsky and Christie Hodgen, appears in the forthcoming issue of the Missouri Review (28.3, 2005), en route to newstands (and subscribers) now.

Of the book, King writes, “I told you one book on my list wasn’t available yet; this is it. I get tons of soon-to-be-published novels, and happened to pick this one up because of the unusual title. And couldn’t put it down again. I think this brave story of a lost man’s reconnection with the world could become a generational touchstone, like Catch-22, The Monkey Wrench Gang, or The Catcher in the Rye. There’s a lot of uplift here, but Homes’ deadpan delivery keeps it from feeling greeting-card phony. So does the novel’s ambience, which is 21st-century L.A. Weird. This Book Will Save Your Life won’t be published until April, but I read it in October, so it belongs on this list. And hey, maybe it will save somebody’s life.”

Homes, whose work also includes The End of Alice, Things You Should Know, The Safety of Objects, and Music for Torching, has been called provocative and dangerous, and in the interview she discusses her novels and the changing roles of fiction and nonfiction.