Things You Should Know : A Collection of Stories

Rating:
Summary: I heard Homes was a good writer
Review: A local book dealer that I frequent quite regularly suggested A.M Homes to me. I have read the book out of sheer disbelief up to this point and now I can't bring myself to finish it. A.M Homes apparently has had very little life experience, instead content to regurgitate her sad little POV for all to see. Her writing skills are not entertaining in the least, the characters are weak, and the stories insipid.
I'm sad I wasted money on this book, be even more upset that I wasted moments of my life that I won't be able to recover.


Rating:
Summary: Good, Warped Stories
Review: A.M. Homes is a little warped--she's got a dark, twisted vision of contemporary life and that vision serves her well in this collection of short stories. At times she almost verges on science fiction, with people morphing into animals, but I believe she is at her best when simply pondering the intricacies and oddities of human relationships, which the bulk of these stories do quite well.

Rating:
Summary: entertaining
Review: Another excellent book of short stories from A.M. Holmes. I like her short stories because they are different and never boring. She isn't afraid to write stuff that may be shocking or disgusting to most people.

Rating:
Summary: Some good stuff, but not her best.
Review: As is usually the case with Homes, these stories focus on discontented suburbanites. Mostly weaker men, stronger women. Some very good, if tough to read stories. As always, Homes's writing is quick-hitting. Especially as she deals with more serious topics: a husband and wife couple in which the woman's cancer is exposing the weaknesses in their relationship, the story of a man who hits and kills a kid with his car, and a story about Nancy and Ronald Reagan and dealing with his Alzheimer's. Overall, the stories were less outrageous than some of her other stuff, and several of them seemed to end with punch lines, which I didn't care for. But pretty good stuff otherwise.

Rating:
Summary: The pain is the game.....
Review: Emotional trainwrecks are served up as only A. M. Homes can; clever staging and just enough room to bloom.
Homes will introduce you to relationships that have only tattered buttons to push, relationships that are beyond broken.
Strangely, the battered participants have no choice but to continue on, no tease of a resolution, it doesn't come.
In keeping with her other books, Homes predictably drops the whole mess in your lap which can leave you feeling burdened and oddly responsible.

Rating:
Summary: My pick for bookclub
Review: Homes has a vivid imagination and outstanding writing skills. She's in command of her storytelling technique. Her prose strikes all the right notes. She's even good at characterization.

Unfortunately, she's a slave to literary fashion, specifically, boring, New Yorker-style catatonic realism. (In fairness, perhaps to break the mold a little, Homes tosses in some self-consciously clever surrealistic bits here and there, but it doesn't work.) Homes gets accolades because she believes all the right things and expresses them in all the right ways -- but that's not the sign of an intellectually rigorous writer.

The women tend to be hyper-accomplished professionals, usually married to confused, weak men whom they have to dress and feed in the morning. This scenario got tired after the second story. By the fourth I began to feel like I was dealing with an ideologue.

Of course, that's the risk when you put together collections of stories from the last ten years. You start to see the writer's tricks ... for example, several of her characters are obsessed with being prepared. They try to stock up on emergency supplies to plan for every conceivable occurrence. OK, good enough idea once. But two, three times?

Recommendation: If you like New Yorker-style fiction, you'll really enjoy this. If you want ideas and characters explored in a little more depth, take a pass.

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately poor stories
Review: I'm a big A.M. Homes fan, and this is a terrible book. I'd love to read stories the way she used to write them, but they're not in here.

I heard Ms. Homes say at a reading that "Things You Should Know" was conceived to contain stories that all involve "shape-shifting" of some sort. The stories don't display her talent; they're boring. They're pretty bad, really. It reads as though she's coasting, now that she's become as famous as she is. I don't think anyone without a "name" would have got this book published. One of the stories, btw, is on the Nerve website, so you can have a free look.

She's uneven, I think. I used to refer to A.M. Homes as my favorite contemporary author. Now, I find her to be ubiquitous and mediocre. This book is perfect example of her mediocre writing. Ms. Homes, though, is marvellously talented. Read "Music For Torching" (my favorite) instead, if you haven't. Or "The Saftey of Objects" (my own 2nd favorite) or even "Jack." "In a Country of Mothers" is also easy to skip - her first (I'm pretty sure) and predictable from right near the beginning.

If you've not read Ms. Homes's work, I would definitely not start here. If you're a fan - go for it. I know I'll keep reading what she writes and keep watching her read - though it is becoming tiresome.

As an aside: she's rather unfriendly and pompous in person, a busy-looking-for-better-people-to-talk-to type. But, that's her prerogative. She's earned the right.

Rating:
Summary: entertaining
Review: I'm a big A.M. Homes fan, and this is a terrible book. I'd love to read stories the way she used to write them, but they're not in here.

I heard Ms. Homes say at a reading that "Things You Should Know" was conceived to contain stories that all involve "shape-shifting" of some sort. The stories don't display her talent; they're boring. They're pretty bad, really. It reads as though she's coasting, now that she's become as famous as she is. I don't think anyone without a "name" would have got this book published. One of the stories, btw, is on the Nerve website, so you can have a free look.

She's uneven, I think. I used to refer to A.M. Homes as my favorite contemporary author. Now, I find her to be ubiquitous and mediocre. This book is perfect example of her mediocre writing. Ms. Homes, though, is marvellously talented. Read "Music For Torching" (my favorite) instead, if you haven't. Or "The Saftey of Objects" (my own 2nd favorite) or even "Jack." "In a Country of Mothers" is also easy to skip - her first (I'm pretty sure) and predictable from right near the beginning.

If you've not read Ms. Homes's work, I would definitely not start here. If you're a fan - go for it. I know I'll keep reading what she writes and keep watching her read - though it is becoming tiresome.

As an aside: she's rather unfriendly and pompous in person, a busy-looking-for-better-people-to-talk-to type. But, that's her prerogative. She's earned the right.

Rating:
Summary: The Underbelly of Suburbia
Review: In her follow-up short story collection to 1990's THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS, A.M. Homes is still up to her own tricks, taking an almost sadistic delight in showing us the darker side of human nature and relationships in the perversely dangerous safety of suburbia. With the deftness of a knife-sharpener, Ms. Homes always manages to infuse just the right amount of humor in the flattest and most sober of situtions, making the reader want to laugh out-loud just because it is so unexpected.

In THE CHINESE LESSON a Caucasian man married to a Chinese woman keeps tabs on his senile mother-in-law with the help of a computer chip and tracking device which maps out precisely where she is at all times.

RAFT IN WATER, FLOATING tells the story of a young anorexic woman who lies out in a pool all day oblivious to everything around her. As her parents' marriage falls apart, she is visited by a very unusual guest.

In GEORGICA, the victim of a serious accident tries to get pregnant on the shores of a beach using the most unorthodox method after she breaks up with her fiance.

REMEDY tells the story of a career woman whose marriage is falling apart. Desperate for support from her parents, she returns home only to find that her home is occupied by a mysterious fitness guru whom her parents are completely enamoured with.

In ROCKETS AROUND THE MOON, a best friend narrates the changes that his pal's seemingly normal and ideal household goes through after the father is the perpetrator of a car accident, killing a child.

PLEASE REMAIN CALM is abnormal in its portrayal of a relatively compassionate married couple despite the husband's suicidal ideation. The man cannot understand why his driven emergency-room doctor wife stays with him and tries to drive her away. "I'm having an affair", "No, you're not!" A very poignant ending. This is probably my favorite story in the collection.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW is the very short title story about a boy who feels his life is incomplete because while he was out sick, his teacher passed out a list of THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW, but often aren't aware of because they seem so foolish. Despite its brevity, it seems to lend a theme to the collection, presenting a subtle urgency to the body of stories.

THE WHIZ KIDS tells a story of adolescent sexuality as embodied in two boys. I really was not a fan of this story at all. It was too short to lend any understanding to its abberance.

In DO NOT DISTURB, a couple finds that paradoxically, the woman's diagnosis with cancer only accentuates the flaws in their marriage as opposed to bringing them closer together.

THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS SUNNY AND BRIGHT revives the mysterious visitor from RAFT IN WATER, FLOATING and chronicles her day and relationships as she goes about her job as a forensic architect and visits her mother in a nursing home.

THE FORMER FIRST LADY AND THE FOOTBALL PLAYER is a meditation on what life must be like for Nancy Reagan as she struggles to come to terms with her husband, who is a mere shell of what he once was.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW is a very elegant, carefully-composed collection. A.M. Homes is a masterful and articulate writer who pays attention to details. The problem, however, is perhaps that she ignores the bigger picture. Eighty percent of these stories deal with identical characters: submissive husbands whose marriages to driven career women are falling apart in the soft environs of a suburban neighborhood. Shocking expressions of sexuality, especially in adolescents, usually figure in. While each of the stories certainly has its moments, each one is also fairly anti-climactic: the stories could virtually be described as Domestic Decay Version 2.0, 3.0, etc. This is good if you are looking to see how various life situations effect dysfunctional relationships. I just wish there had been more substance. Nonetheless, the collection is appropriately titled, because within each one of these stories is buried the THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW.

Rating:
Summary: Brutal, Honest, Disturbing and Brilliant
Review: Not for the delicate minded, A.M. Homes returns after a twelve year absence with a collection of short stories that show the human condition rubbed raw to the bone.These are not happy people, but so compelling in their various life crisis' that you can't help but feel like you're sucked into a vacuum. Two in particular are just plain brilliant: The first about a woman who's a shape shifter, and the second an imagined account of life for the former First Lady Nancy Reagan as she copes with her husbands alzheimer condition. These last two stories alone are worth the price of the book.