Though not so perfectly crafted as May We Be Forgiven, Music For Torching is still tremendously enjoyable. Homes explores varieties of destruction, and it's hard to look away, even when the urge is toward utter annihilation: "Elaine doesn't want to celebrate women's lives, she wants to smash her life, to pummel it into a powder." There's something to be said for an anatomy of the pieces as they come apart.
a. m. homes
May We Be Forgiven, A. M. Homes
I really didn't know what to expect when I started this book; I suppose I thought it would be a staid look at American life today, the problematics of families today. And I guess it is that, to an extent, but it's so much more. A man sleeps with his brother's wife, and everything spins out of control, yet somehow, somehow, the world holds together. We make mistakes and we atone for them, and even when that atonement isn't quite enough, the trying (the trying, trying, trying) makes for a new kind of redemption, a new kind of family. I read the entire 500 pages over the course of a day and a half; even though I consider myself an avid reader, this is perhaps the book I've devoured most rapturously within recent memory.