Book Review: Music for Torching - A.M. Homes

To celebrate the 200^th review on Books, Time, and Silence, I will be re-posting 10 of my favourite reviews.

On day 9 it is A.M. Homes's wonderfully nihilistic Music for Torching.

Read: July 2007

Music for Torching in one tweet-sized chunk:
A delirious vision of suburban life gone wrong. Vitriolic, nihilistic, neurotic, it is a novel of scandalous normality, of impotence in the face of life.

Music for Torching is a huge blazing fire of a novel, consuming the vagaries of suburban family life like dry timber. Vitriolic, nihilistic, neurotic, it is a novel of scandalous normality, of impotence in the face of life. At times it reads like Revolutionary Road for the late twentieth century, there is that same trapped sense of powerlessness, that same longing for more, that same pressure to conform. I can’t remember when I was last so utterly hooked on a book within the first five pages.

Paul and Elaine’s marriage is burning out of control, they are isolated and atomised and horrified by what they have become. We first met them in a short story in The Safety of Objects when they enjoyed a hallucinogenic refrain from family pressures smoking crack while their children were away. Looking back on it in this book, they remember that as a moment of almost unimaginable happiness, as though it was the last time they felt united and whole. Now their nihilistic tendencies are tearing their household apart. In between passionless sex they bicker and nag, have affairs and wish they could make their lives good again. Their only pleasures involves dinner parties with their friends when they can bask in the impression of neighbourhood contentment.

The pressure is building, something has to give.

One night Elaine cannot face cooking. Paul offers to Barbecue. Egged on by their inanimate lives Elaine kicks over the barbecue setting the house on fire. Feeling deliciously liberated they get in the car and go for a meal with the children. But the house is not burnt to the ground, only gutted. Denied the cataclysmic freedom of total destruction Elaine and Paul can only try to rebuild, both the house and their fractured selves.

What ensues is a dark and claustrophobic journey through the frenzied minds of a couple desperately trying to recreate the image of family happiness. Cue all manor of sexual affairs, not to mention a crack team of house cleaners in space suits and the ubiquitous school hostage situation. But no matter how good and honest their intentions Paul and Elaine are never quite able to get hold of themselves, and bring everything back to how it should be. And normality is sucking them into a false sense of security.

Homes has a vibrant and to-the-point style of prose which makes her writing incredibly warm and inviting. Her characters are well conceived and brilliantly realised, flawed and infuriatingly lovable at the same time. She is concise and her vocabulary is exact; reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald in her ability to say a lot with few words. She is a very good writer and this is a very good book.

Music for Torching is a delirious technicolor vision of suburban life gone wrong. The Times review probably describes it best: “Homes doesn’t so much critique suburban American life as shoot it, stab it, chuck it in the boot of her car and drive it into a lake.” The exhilaration contained within these pages is difficult to diffuse, it is a glorious fire-cracker of a book and you are going to love it.

8.5 out of 10

Music for Torching - A.M. Homes

Read: July 2007

What a great writer A.M. Homes is. Music for Torching is a huge blazing fire of a novel, consuming the vagaries of suburban family life like dry timber. Vitriolic, nihilistic, neurotic, it is a novel of scandalous normality, of impotence in the face of life. I can’t remember when I was last hooked into a book within the first five pages.

Paul and Elaine’s marriage is burning out of control, they are isolated and atomised and horrified by what they have become. We first met them in a short story in The Safety of Objects when they enjoyed a hallucinogenic refrain from family pressures smoking crack while their children were away. Looking back on it in this book, they remember that as a moment of almost unimaginable happiness, as though it was the last time they felt united and whole. Now their nihilistic tendencies are tearing their household apart. In between passionless sex they bicker and nag, have affairs and wish they could make their lives good again. Their only pleasures involves dinner parties with their friends when they can bask in the impression of their neighbourhood contentment. The pressure is building, something is about to explode.

One night Elaine cannot face cooking. Paul offers to Barbecue. Egged on by their inanimate lives Elaine kicks over the barbecue setting the house on fire. Feeling deliciously liberated they get in the car and go for a meal with the children. But the house is not burnt to the ground, only gutted. Denied the cataclysmic freedom of total destruction Elaine and Paul can only try to rebuild, both the house and their fractured selves.

What ensues is a dark and claustrophobic journey through the frenzied minds of a couple desperately trying to recreate the image of family happiness. With a cast of seemingly normal neighbours to help them out, Elaine and Paul strive to renovate their burning lives. Cue all manor of sexual affairs, and a crack team of house cleaners in space suits and the ubiquitous school hostage situation. But no matter how good and honest their intentions Paul and Elaine are never quite able to get hold of themselves, and bring everything back to how it should be. And normality is sucking them into a false sense of security.

Homes has a vibrant and to-the-point style of prose which makes her writing incredibly warm and inviting. Her characters are well conceived and brilliantly realised, flawed and infuriatingly lovable at the same time. She is concise and her vocabulary is exact; reminiscent of Fitzgerald in her ability to say a lot with so few words. In short, she is a very good writer and this is a very good book.

Music for Torching is a delirious technicolor vision of suburban life gone wrong. The Times review probably describes it best: “Homes doesn’t so much critique suburban American life as shoot it, stab it, chuck it in the boot of her car and drive it into a lake.” Newsweek described it as “a hell-bound joyride of a book.” The exhilaration contained within these pages is difficult to diffuse, it is a glorious fire-cracker of a book and you are going to love it.


8.5 out of 10

The End of Alice - A.M. Homes

Read: May 2008

A.M. Homes is a great writer. There can be no doubting that. If you created a chart with the best storytellers at one end, then Homes would certainly be amongst the finest writers at the other. She is exact in her descriptions, concise and beguiling in her pace. Her writing is reminiscent of a modern day F. Scott Fitzgerald in her ability to say a lot in very few words. And if that isn’t enough, she tackles subjects which other authors wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, even it were long, insulated and made of gold.

The End of Alice is a perfect example of this. There can have been few more controversial novels written in the past twenty years.

A middle aged paedophile serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a young girl receives an intriguing letter from a nineteen-year-old student home from college for the summer and intent on seducing a twelve-year-old neighbourhood boy. As their correspondence develops, the prisoner, known only as ‘Chappy’ delights in giving her advice on seduction and waits hungrily for her letters detailing her latest exploits, But as the correspondence progresses, the girl forces Chappy to look back at his past, and the case that had him jailed for life: his ‘relationship’ with Alice. And with every page, the duos intentions and delusions grow ever more menacing.

On publication The End of Alice was described by the NSPCC's spokesman, Jim Harding, as “the most vile and perverted novel I've ever read.” It is not only the depiction of the child sexual abuse that caused outrage but the way that the views of the two protagonists are portrayed: they believe their actions are perfectly acceptable. But what Mr. Harding and others seem incapable of realising is that there is a difference between the fictional voice of a character and the novel as a whole. The novel is narrated by a paedophile, it would be pretty stupid to have either him or his correspondant saying how vile their actions are. And thank god there isn’t a nice ending in which the characters accept the falsehood of their views and actions and seek repentance. There is none of that nonsense. And while the protagonists certainly disguss sex with minors, in no way does the novel glorify it. There are also scenes of gay prison rape and parental abuse. It is all thoroughly uncomfortable reading. There is nothing exciting or positive at all.

My only complaint with this book is that I am not sure what Homes is trying to say here. That paedophiles are humans too? That paedophilia is not gender specific? That abuse in childhood generally begets adult abusers? The first two of these are interesting, particularly the inclusion of a, by all appearances normal, teenage girl paedophile. Through this Homes invites the reader to question what abuse is, and even suggests that what we term paedophilia may not always fall into the neat little categories we might like it to. But the third of these ideas is mundane in the extreme. It has been said in everything written from the 1960’s onwards. And the lepidopterist metaphor is almost unbearably clichéd.

It is too easy to compare The End of Alice to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, but there are many similarities. Not just in the plot but in the atmosphere, the character of the central protagonist, his academic excellence and even the quality of the language. However, by the same token, The End of Alice, like Lolita is dense. It is not a quick or plot-based read, but subtle, full of easily missed nuance. Nor is it a pleasant read, either for its flow or subject matter. Indeed, if you are in any way offended by anything then it is not the book for you. Homes certainly does not hold anything back. And why should she? If you like your fiction challenging, thought-provoking and gritty, then this is a very good book. Probably not enjoyable, but in its own way, intensely rewarding.


6.5 out of 10

Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

Read: February 2009

Revolutionary Road in one tweet sized chunk:

The archetypal suburban drama, Revolutionary Road is a fine piece of controlled narrative fiction by an author in full control of his craft.

It is the 1950’s and with the blossoming cold war, McCarthy witch hunts, and economic boom, America is gripped by the need to conform. The revolutionary road which began in 1776 has led here, a new suburban cul de sac where neighbours call each other ‘darling’ and share cocktails on the lawn.

Frank and April Wheeler are a young, talented, outwardly successful couple with two children, a nice suburban house in Revolutionary Road, and a sociable group of friends. But, like many outwardly successful suburbanite couples in literature, there is a maggot eating away at the core of their lives. They have succumbed to the age old suburban delusion that all their dreams will come true. So while they wait for this bright future to dawn they make grandiose plans to move to Europe, drink far too much , and give way to their own uncontrollable passions. They are each emotionally fragile; as a couple they are teetering on the brink. And when April falls pregnant for a third time and they are forced to put their plans to emigrate to Europe on hold, the fragile facade they have built for themselves begins to crumble away.

The novel opens with a glorious set-piece at a community theatre where the newly formed Laurel Players are about to make their first performance. April is the only member with a theatre background and as such she has been cast in the lead role. But they are underprepared, nervous, and hopelessly disorganised. When one of the cast pulls out at the last minute they are thrown, and more than anyone else April is left alone on the stage to face the humiliation of failure. It is a fearsomely well written beginning, fantastically described, and encapsulating their fragile social milieu almost perfectly.

As the plot progresses inevitably onwards we meet a host of delightfully rounded characters. From the brash businessman Bart Pollock, to Shep and Milly and their impossibly ordinary marriage, and the sad secret kept hidden by the Givings, Revolutionary Road feels like a template upon which all suburban dramas have been written. If you enjoy the discordant relationship at the heart of Revolutionary Road, you should try Music For Torching by A.M. Homes, which updates that nihilistic attitude for the end of the 1990s. Between them they act almost as a conversation down the years: delineating how the world changes, and yet nothing changes.

This is a fine piece of controlled narrative fiction, superbly written by an author in full control of his craft. The plot throws up convincing feints and swerves which make you believe you know where it is going, only to find yourself utterly wrong. Nothing is ever quite what you expect. And when the inevitable cataclysm comes, it is not the all-encompassing destruction you are expecting. It is a modest, powerful, understated ending, reeking with the impossibility of controlling a life which can never be controlled.

7.5 out of 10