This Book Will Save Your Life

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The impossibility of knowing another person completely is one of life’s painful truths, and [this] collection remind us of that—but [it] also shows that there are, at least, tools available to help us try. We carry it with us, not just in our grandmother’s silver,’ he says, ‘but in our bodies, the cells of our hearts. So, Richard embarks on this crazy, sometimes too surreal to be true, but maybe it can be, sort of journey.

I think this brave story of a lost man’s reconnection with the world could become a generational touchstone, like Catch-22, The Monkey Wrench Gang, or The Catcher in the Rye. Typical of Homes’ quirky style, another comedic but emotionally touching and immeasurably enjoyable read. And Richard on having a CT scan, “it was like test-driving a coffin, as though they were scanning him to make a 3-D model—a virtual death;” or Cynthia lamenting her unappreciative family: “I’m non-existent, I’m like a floor lamp.Just below are yellow and orange wildflowers, the purple ice plants, the scruffy brown and green scrub, chaparral, and mint and flowers he can't name. Richard even “raids his sock drawer for what he thinks look like decent horse ear plugs” to make sure the horse can be extricated from its unusual predicament with minimal trauma! Richard isn't sure if this is something that the movie star's assistant also arranged, or if when the cops radioed that there was a horse in a hole, someone picked up the information.

It brings tears to my eyes and gives me that hope that someday that warm fuzzy will be more than a passing flicker. That thing that people think that they might be capable of, but either because they’re not presented with the situations or because they’re conscious of being ‘good’ then, well, it’s less real, right?Sometimes you can’t do things for the people you should do things for, including yourself, but you can do them for someone else, a stranger…” Our interactions have a domino effect, there is no real individualism, as even purely selfish actions have consequences on others.

A big American story with big American themes, the saga of the triumph of a new kind of self-invented nuclear family over cynicism, apathy, loneliness, greed, and technological tyranny…this novel has a strong moral core, neither didactic nor judgmental, that holds out the possibility of redemption through connection. Music For Torching is in development with director Steven Shainberg with a script by Buck Henry, and This Book Will Save Your Life is in Development with Stone Village Pictures. The movie star manages to look directly at the cameras and give a big wave, just before the signal goes out to lift the horse.There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (published as Emergency: One Man's Story Of A Dangerous World And How To Stay Alive In It by Canongate) is a 2009 book on survivalist preparedness by Neil Strauss. Things just seem to happen to Richard; I know I’m making no sense but when he ends up riding on a stranger’s back down a hill – you realise this is a ride YOU MUST BE ON. And when his son finally confronts him with resentments saved up through adolescence, it's a shriek of psychological pain like being awakened by a firecracker: shocking but not very illuminating.