Customer Reviews

Music for Torching

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

The Friday night party is over and the drunken host and hostess begin yet another spat. The host is secretly pleased because the date of one of their male friends has slipped him her phone number.

All this happens on the first two pages, and my immediate thought is oh, no, not another novel about a decaying, suburban marriage. Well, actually, it is another novel about a decaying, suburban marriage, but the good news, the saving grace of it all, is that it is quite hilarious.

The couple, Paul and Elaine, are totally out of spiritual fuel. Their exasperation with their lives is manifested when, on sudden impulse during a barbecue, they use lighter fluid to spread flames from the grill to the outside of their house. They make a quick departure, and return several hours later to find the house damaged but still standing. While repairs are made they stay with friends who seem to be from another planet. They farm out their two boys to other couples, and then, to fill in the dead spots in their lives, they engage in affairs. Elaine tries out lesbianism, while Paul spends time, much time, with two women acquaintances.

Every day Paul goes into work determined to have the most productive day imaginable, and every day he spends his office hours doing next to nothing. Well I shouldn't say he is completely inert. He does go out for long lunches and bed sessions with a woman known only as "The Date". He also gets tattooed in a nether region of his anatomy. Elaine lunches with a vocational counselor to see if some form of education would start her on a course of rejuvenation. But these flailing gestures do not bring peace and happiness to our weary couple.

The novel mocks not only the suburban couple, but also the suburban community of friends, and the workplace. It is a sad story that is loaded with black humor. The ending is just sad - and rather bizarre. There is no doubt in my mind that Paul and Elaine are riding on the edge of clinical depression. Does author Homes save them or do she push them over the edge?

Ms. Homes is an extremely talented writer who can take this rather overdone plot concept, and make it a delightful read. Hmmm. Why do I think a novel on marital disaster is delightful? Why do I chuckle at people who are desperate and depressed? Am I running on empty?

Homes writes the things you think of but never speak aloud. Her novel, 'The End of Alice', was a disturbing and powerful piece of work, and not something I could see the mainstream public reading and remotely enjoying or understanding. 'Music For Torching' is a bit more accessible, but not much. This time around, Homes sets us down smack in the middle of a suburbia seemingly out of hell. Everyone is crazy, nuts, sexually charged and confused...could this be what we all are really like?

The characters are way out there, yet you can somehow identify and relate with them. Suddenly don't like where you live? Just burn down the house! The humor here is different and strange, and not everyone who reads this expecting normality is going to enjoy it. I myself was laughing aloud at many points.

If you enjoy a dark, scathing look at suburban life (I have to liken it a bit to the film 'American Beauty' but more twisted) then this is a book you should pick up immediately. Homes is a talented author and I will be looking forward to everything she writes.

When people noticed me reading this book and asked about it, Iexplained that "this woman writes filthy books in beautifulprose." Her previous novel, _The End of Alice_, blew me away with its incredible combination of audacity and sensitivity.

_Music For Torching_ looks (and is) more conventional than _Alice_. Yet Homes manages to make the supposedly tired and overworked theme of suburban alienation and angst suprisingly gripping. For the first half to two-thirds of the book, I enjoyed it as a sort of cartoon for grownups, with dimly recognizable people involved in farcical situations, and a sort of mild but ever-present threat in every line that seemed to promise anything could happen. Dialogue seems especially rich with implications and unspoken realities. (The word "fine" and variations on "Everything's fine" somehow rung every tone from biting irony to utter sincerity.)

But by the last third I found myself laughing out loud on occasion, and surprised to find myself actually caring about Paul and Elaine, the central couple of the plot. How did Homes do that?

Strange things happen all through the narrative -- a couple impulsively attempts to burn down their house, female suburbanites initiate a fiery sexual affair, a cop commits attempted rape -- but the author often manages to pinpoint the motivations of the characters to perfection. The sex between Paul and his mistress, "Mrs. Apple," for example, seems to capture the essence of an affair when it works.

I'm convinced this writer can do just about anything she wants. The only reason I give this book four stars is to indicate that _The End of Alice_ was a little stranger, a little more bracing, a little better. I'm rating Homes against herself here, not against other writers.

In looking at the reviews sumbitted by other readers, one can't help but notice that this novel elicits strong reactions. Either its a 5-star masterpiece or a 1-star piece of trash; a scathing revelation of suburban life or an attempt to demonize the generally suburban white upper-middle -class. However what stands out to this reader is not the specific reasons that one might like or dislike the book, but rather the vehemence with which the opinion is expressed.

Such powerful responses, both positive and negative, are the result of reading fantastic writing. Ms. Homes has the power to manipulate the reader's emotions through her words-- although the result is obviously different in each case. But there is no denying that reading this novel will affect the reader in some way. It just can't be ignored.

This novel is on the whole generally accessible on a surface level, but very gritty underneath. When Elaine offers the possibility of attending medical school while at a dinner party, one can't help but laugh at the absurdity-- and then immediately weep at the fact that Elaine would never be able to do such a thing.

This novel is worth the time and effort, as long as the reader has an open mind.

This is one of those books that evokes very strong reactions in its readers, as is evident by the reviews I've read here. One cannot deny that this is good writing. . . whether the reviewer wrote to say how much they loved or hated it, the book moves the reader so much they feel compelled to share their feelings. Only skilled writers can accomplish this level of emotional response. I loved this book, it was entirely compelling, yes, at times a tad distasteful, sometimes shocking, but all the same it was enjoyable reading. Definitely not for everyone, but if you enjoyed the movie "American Beauty" chances are you'll love this book.

This book dramatizes what happens when you realize that your life has been slowly creeping up to smother you. I'm still not sure if I am disliking this book because it is dark but without other rewards (e.g. supple prose, delicious epiphany) or if it has done it's job with unlikeable, miserable characters that you'd like to give a good shake. They all seem so stagnant that the author, at a loss for a conclusion, seemed to throw a big movie-of-the-week finale on the end. That, I am sure I did not like. Then again, was I supposed to take the ending with a big wink-wink? I like that even less. This book wasn't painful, but it wasn't a depressing delight either.

The topic is by no means extraordinary nor the social satire. In life is impossible to avoid conflict and regardless of the location of the planet where you live you will find it. So here the couple feel that their existence is boring and meaningless, but if we look closer the reason for their drama, it is never really brought to life by the author. It does not seem to me that she wants to denounce anything in particular about human experience in suburbia, or to open the mind of the reader to issues that somehow live hidden before our daily lives. The burning of the house is an empty act that leads nowhere. To some degree it was not even necessary for the development of the story. Nothing in the book rings true, and that is the problem, the book might be fun to read but it fails to move you or to provide any type of insight. As always the praises that we see from the critics are just part of a marketing show.

Music for Torching, A.M. Homes's forth novel, should expand her readership considerably. More accessible and much less obviously controversial than her preceding novel, "The End of Alice", "Music for Torching" documents the dropping of masks of sanity which ordinary people wear in public life.

Her protagonists, a middle-class married couple, reel through the pages desperately searching for a means of self-expression amidst the rigid banalities of suburban morality and material trappings.

After burning down their own home in a moment of nihilism, vandalism accompanied by paralysis and stunned disbelief, Elaine and Paul have passed through the looking glass that the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used to call "The Real". The most banal elements of daily life are varnished with a coat of confusion and incomprehension, yet nowhere does Homes throw in the towel and descend into flat-out surrealism. The tightrope walk between levels of reality is one which the author fairly dances across.

A few hilariously improbable affairs ensue, but the improbability of the occassional plot device still carries with it an air of realism. We've all heard stories so bizarre they have the ring of truth to them: so does Homes's novel, only it happens to be, in fact, fiction.

The protogonists' lives unfold with the apparent randonmess of our own daily experiences, and Homes is nothing if not topical in the both hedonistic and masochistic choices she has her lost characters make. Baby boomers to the core, Elaine and Paul, though sympathetic, are selfish and impulsive, going through mid-life crisises of a sort simultaneously but very much alone, even in respect to one another. Homes's presentation of Elaine and Paul is deadpan, neither judgemental nor forgiving.

Homes's voice, as was obvious from her collection of short stories (one of which inspired this very novel) "The Safety of Objects" onward, is extremely, disconcertingly powerful and unique. There are trace elements of Updike here, but Homes is charting territory entirely new and her own. For all the comedy which emerges, her characters find that life is terrifyingly resistant to control.

I still don't get how you come to the ending of this story. I think I read someone's review that likened this book to a car wreck that you cannot help but slow down to look at. The characters are incomprehensible and sad, yet I found myself laughing quite a bit, feeling like I should apologize for my own rubbernecking.

...but it's been done, twice--- "American Beauty" and "Ice Storm". So, if you like stories about "life ain't what it seems in suburbia" then this book is definitely for you. It's a well-written story that moves quickly (with a tragic ending) about the facades that families erect and what happens behind closed doors. Funny, angry, great dialogue. Homes' first book, THE END OF ALICE was gripping, but this is one is better.