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This Book Will Save Your Life Hardcover – April 20, 2006

by A. M. Homes (Author)

99 customer reviews

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Disconnected from the outside world until a health scare and a sink hole in his yard force him to forge new relationships, middle-aged everyman Richard Novak finds his life changed by a doughnut shop owner, a kidnapped woman, a counterculture icon, and others. 40,000 first printing.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The journey from isolation to connection in a semiapocalyptic Los Angeles is the subject of this blithely redemptive new novel by Homes (Things You Should Know). Richard Novak is a day-trader wealthy enough to employ a housecleaner, nutritionist, decorator and personal trainer, but after he's taken to the hospital with a panic attack he realizes he has no one to call. Determined to change his life, but also stalked by strange circumstances (e.g., a sinkhole opens in his lawn), Richard makes extravagant gestures of goodwill toward various acquaintances, relatives and strangers. By the time his misguided altruistic adventures have become fodder for late-night TV jokes, Ben, the son he abandoned years ago in a divorce, arrives in town. Richard's tenuous and fraught reconnection with Ben is at the heart of his reclamation, but when it is complete the city of L.A. itself collapses, à la Mike Davis's City of Quartz. Homes's stale cultural critique feels deliberate. She gradually undoes the ordered precision of Richard's Bobo paradise, and literally leaves him floating serenely on his kitchen tabletop in an "it's all good" sort of daze. But the cool distance she keeps from Richard's struggle, and the banal terms in which she articulates it, leave one with a much darker sense of the possibilities for being saved. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Let's start with the good news for fans of A. M. Homes (Music for Torching; The Safety of Objects): it's not all bad. A few critics praised Homes's convincing characters, emotional immediacy, deadpan dialogue, and expert skewering of modern L.A. The San Francisco Chronicle even compared Homes to Kurt Vonnegut (and Richard to Billy Pilgrim). Unfortunately, negative reviews prevailed. Critics described the characters, plot, and onerous moral about the prisons of our own making as cartoonish, clichéd, and tired. The Washington Post sums up the sentiment: "If you're as isolated and disconnected as Richard, you'll find the details here surprising and hilarious, but otherwise, it's yesterday's news."<BR>Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (April 20, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670034932
ISBN-13: 978-0670034932
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Average Customer Review: 99 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #730,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2817 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Humor
- #7308 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Psychological Thrillers
- #9072 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Humorous

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Elusive and Bookish

Unique and funny...and might actually save your life!

August 7, 2015

Verified Purchase

Not the normal genre I read but a friend recommended it, so I branched out. I wasn't sure if I would like it, but what a talented author A.M. Homes is!!!

Richard Novak is distant and closed off from his family and friends. He's been floating through his work driven life until one day he simply can't ignore life anymore. His journey is both eye-opening and hilarious. This book is written from Richard's very unique perspective and might indeed save your life. I was so wrapped up in the story I actually didn't want it to end! I'll definitely reading more by this author in the future.

5 people found this helpful6 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Hmm

January 22, 2013

Verified Purchase

I was riveted from the first sentence and, to me, the amount of drag in this, I want to say--but am not sure it's true--fine book was less than 1%, in other words, negligible. So Homes' prose is not the problem, though I felt it drew too much attention to itself. So why not 5 stars? Because I could not believe the protagonist as real. That may be my failing, I'm not sure. It just seems to me that a person who has been able to amass wealth would not be so naive. For that matter, I believed none of the characters, though I liked them. I believed none of the circumstances, such as the sinkhole and the people Novak meets, such as the overwhelmed mom who, by conveniently running away from her family for a while becomes his sidekick..

This Book Will Save Your Life seemed to me like a Bildungsroman in which the author forces the actions, motivations, and happenings to support her message. On some level, dare I say, that is bad writing. At one point, the morning after having read a good chunk, I even contemplated not finishing. I skipped ahead a little to see if things were going to get better. Not so, yet inexplicably, I was drawn in again, so much so that I went back to where I'd left off and continued to read the rest till late into the night. I wanted it to be over because I couldn't stop reading it. Weird. There's something there when a book makes a reader do that. So then why even 4 stars? That's why, I could't stop.

There's something that makes me not want to dismiss this book. So, reader, as far as I'm concerned, your on your own. In summary, you may or may not like this book.

One person found this helpful2 people found this helpful

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Kay L. Campbell

Read it, forget it? Nope

February 21, 2014

Verified Purchase

I first listened to this book several years ago because I'm a commuter and it looked interesting (and my local library had limited audio selections). I was not that taken with it on the first listen. But in the intervening years, I keep remembering scenes out of it, and the entire sense of how Richard, the main character, gets called back to life bit by bit. This is sort of an "L.A. Story" in print in the way that it uses L.A. as a metaphor for the superficially artificial and yet somehow buoyantly real vehicle for modern life. I've just purchased a copy to hear it again because I realized I want to live through it again. Makes me want to see her other novels.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

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Suzied

Great reading - sometimes funny - well written

May 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is the first A M Homes book that I've read and I really enjoyed it.

Richard's organised and contained life is about to change. Through a series of somewhat strange and sometimes amusing events, Richard's life is turned around. I love that the characters in this story are flawed (a personal favourite of mine) and more real than any dreamlike macho superman type. I went on the journey with Richard which left me feeling great and optimistic that life can bring new pleasures when you are least expecting them.

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M, Compulsive Reader

And then . . .

August 12, 2008

Verified Purchase

Richard's life Vesuviouses. A bout of unbearable pain encompasses him, expanding his life from his unintentional cloistered existance. From knowing only his housekeeper, nutritionist, and personal trainer, he enters the lives of others -- who enter his life. There's the donut-maker, the woman crying in the produce section of the grocery store, the horse in the sinkhole below his house, the gourmet-cook movie star, the eccentric writer next door, and his own son. Oh, yes, and the area of Los Angeles undergoing its own cycle.

Great fun, as friendships evolve, new friends's lives intersect one another, and he makes conscious plans to enlarge his life.

Re-read it anually.

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Mangala Rich

Different, well written, engaging.

February 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

Different engaging well written!
I recommend this book.
Real yet not, hopeful and painful, messy and focused on the present. An easy provoking read

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Susanne

Excellent - another terrific book by AM Homes!!

July 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

For me, A.M. Homes delivered again in "This Book will save your life". I am surprised to see that early reviews were fairly negative. Homes lets me get into the emotions of her characters. . .in this book, I could feel the isolation of her main character. The novel takes place in LA - the main character is a wealthy, lonely, closed-off financial whiz. . .his house may be sinking, his relationships are broken. . .his full-time housekeeper prepares nutritious meals (read - boring). . .basically nothing in his life works.

Throughout the course of the book - after a chance meeting with a weepy suburban mother
in the supermarket - his life begins to change. He begins very slowly to open up. . .I enjoyed the journey with him. This book reminded me of a book I've never forgotten -
"Broken for You" by Stephanie Kallos. . .maybe not a great book but oh so memorable. It was about two women somehow coming to life through their relationship. . .and breaking alot of china as well!! Just worth mentioning.

I count on Homes to deliver excellent prose - and also a fair amount of humor - I can see comparisons to J. Tropper, or even Kurt Vonnegut, as others suggest. . .but there's more as well. Homes' body of work also reminds me of another favorite of
mine - Ann Patchett. Here's why - both are young authors who have managed to produce many excellent and very diverse works. I marvel at what they've produced. Like Patchett, Homes is an author I can count on.

4 people found this helpful5 people found this helpful

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Margot

good story! very entertaining and insightful

September 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

As well written and entertaining story, this book kept me thinking and entertained. Touches on some real life quandaries, like are we parenting correctly?, Regretting love lost, how easy it is to pull inside ourselves shutting out others from our lives, and how fulfilling friendship can be. Gets messy with some adult topics of drug use and sex, but not in a degrading way. I even liked the ending!

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