April 1, 2018
A collection that examine the absurdities of modern life.In the title story of Homes' (May We Be Forgiven, 2012, etc.) latest collection, a love affair is sparked between former friends when they are reunited at a genocide conference. The strangeness of this serves to illuminate the complex depths of their emotional states. It also creates opportunities for dark humor. As the conference begins, the leader poses the big question: "Why do Genocide(S) continue to happen?" And then "He goes on to thank their sponsors." "A Prize for Every Player" carries on the theme of consumerism. It opens with a family competing "boys versus girls" in an elaborate version of Supermarket Sweep. After finding a human baby in an aisle, Tom--the father--launches into a long, nostalgic monologue about America. Throughout the book, dialogue is given tremendous weight and space. Characters speak in full paragraphs, and where there is self-awareness about that, it is quirky and fun. When shoppers overhear Tom, they convince him to run for president. Too often, however, such awareness is lacking. This is most glaringly the case in "The National Cage Bird Show," a story told entirely through messages in a chat room for bird owners. Even when there is an actual narrator, Homes shies away from exposition, forcing her characters to say too much. Nonetheless, there are many true gems of conversation. "Her face is ruined," a mother says in "Hello Everybody." It is the first thing she says upon seeing her child in the hospital after a grizzly car accident. "I'm calling Dr. Pecker...if there's anyone he'll come in off the golf course for, it's me." " 'Leave it, ' the daughter [begs]. 'I'll look like I've lived.' "Stories filled with dark wit in the tradition of Amy Hempel and Joy Williams.
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April 30, 2018
Homes’s uneven collection of short
fiction (following the novel May We Be Forgiven) searches for humor and wonder amidst the anxieties of contemporary America. In “Brother on Sunday,” a brother-in-law’s unwelcome visit shines light on the blemishes of a very surface-obsessed marriage. Totaling only five pages, “Whose Story Is It, and Why Is It Always on Her Mind?” follows a self-harmer who pushes thorns into the soles of her feet. Over the course of 50 pages, the exemplary title story details a long-coming tryst between two middle-aged writers, a war correspondent and a novelist. Two stories, the pleasantly listless “Hello Everybody” and the movingly tragic “She Got Away,” share characters and setting, though each trains its own unique lens onto the lives of young and old in Los Angeles. Strong as these selections may be, the collection suffers overall from the inclusion of the lackluster alongside the great, interesting experiments that never quite feel like finished products. Nowhere is this more evident than in “The National Cage Bird Show,” which attempts—and fails—to take on both military life and sexual assault by way of a chat room for parakeet owners. Still, Homes’s fans—as well as readers looking for sharp and funny short fiction—will find much to enjoy.
Starred review from June 1, 2018
Versatile and imaginative, Homes brings her literary daring and prowess to memoir, screenwriting, novels, including May We Be Forgiven (2012), winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction, and short stories. In her third provocative story collection, she displays her command of the viciously realistic and the pointedly surreal, the comic and the tragic. A master of honed dialogue?play-like in their momentum, many of these tales have an Edward Albee aura?Homes is also potently visual and acknowledges artists who inspire her, including Eric Fischl and Petah Coyne. But it is the searing precision of her language and her profound and thorny concerns that infuse these unpredictable tales with their unnerving power. The title story, set during a writers' summit on Genocide(S), is an escalating duel between a Transgressive Novelist and a War Correspondent as they thrash out painful questions of Jewishness, sexuality, conscience, and atonement. Two chilling stories reveal the creepy artificiality and despair permeating a wealthy L.A. family. In a chat room on a website about parakeets, a soldier in Iraq connects with a lonely, abused teenage girl in a swanky Manhattan apartment. In the gorgeously magical Omega Point, hidden family history linked to the atomic bomb is spectacularly revealed. Virtuoso Homes, aligned with Grace Paley, Joy Williams, and Lydia Millet, is fierce, witty, defining, and compassionate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
August 1, 2018
Homes's first work since 2012's film-optioned May We Be Forgiven, winner of the Women's Prize in Fiction (once graced by Orange and Bailey's sponsorship), this collection forthrightly addresses our unsettled world. In the title story, for instance, old friends meet at a conference on genocide and find solace in ancient traditions.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2018
In "The National Cage Bird Show," a story midway through this first work since Homes's 2012 Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, a soldier and a troubled young woman enter a chat room for budgies (a type of parakeet) and take the conversation in various personal and fractured directions in ways that jangle the other chat roomers (and maybe readers, too): what's going on here? That sort of disorientation occurs throughout. Two friends playact their way through a lunch meeting, imitating a noxious husband; the extemporaneous poolside meeting of Cheryl and Walter gradually reveals the past and present of her wealthy, laughably class-conscious family (Cheryl's sister can't believe Walter's family doesn't have their own pool); and the War Correspondent and Transgressive Novelist see each other again at a genocide conference, having sex (though she's a lesbian) and fighting afterward about their own past and present, their superfluities contrasting sharply with the conference theme. Certainly they know that, but other characters aren't always so wise; we can feel dropped into the middle of a conversation, and it doesn't always work. VERDICT Sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating tales of modern absurdity; Homes's many fans will want. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.