May We Be Forgiven

This novel starts at maximum force - and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black-comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing -- Salman Rushdie
I started reading A.M. Homes twenty years ago. Wild and funny, questioning and true, she is a writer to go travelling with on the journey called life -- Jeanette Winterson
Reads like a brilliant miniseries. I gorged on it like a DVD boxset... Homes is dark and funny and elegant all at the same time. [This] has the narrative intensity of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and the emotional punch of Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved, all told through the eyes of Larry David. It's the best thing I've read this year... Masterful -- Viv Groskop * Observer *
Wonderful, wild, heartbreaking, hilarious and astonishing... This is a piercing, perceptive and deeply funny novel about the nature of life, family and love -- Doug Johnstone * Independent on Sunday *
A.M. Homes has long been one of our most important and original writers. May We Be Forgiven is her most ambitious as well as her most accessible novel to date; sex and violence invade the routines of suburban domestic life in a way that reminded me of The World According to Garp, although in the end it's a thoroughly original work of imagination -- Jay McInerney
Exhilarating -- Lucy Lethbridge, Books of the Year * Observer *
The most thrilling, ambitious, thought-provoking American novel to have emerged in a long while -- David Evans, Books of the Year * Independent on Sunday *
Every page crackles with wit and intelligence -- Marcus Berkmann, Books of the Year * Spectator *
One of the most acclaimed American writers of her generation -- Richard Grant * Telegraph Magazine *
Laugh out loud funny... Completely wonderful. Extraordinary -- BBC Radio 4 * Saturday Review *
Being a clever American novel, this is also an examination of the American dream... but, wherever you live, Homes's sharp, detailed prose will teem with gloriously free, un-airbrushed life -- Tim Auld * Sunday Telegraph *
A brilliantly funny tale of a fractured family... [An] unmissable novel -- Eithne Farry * Marie Claire *
Homes returns with another stylish read... Those who wish Jonathan Franzen wrote more frequently will devour Homes's work, and rightly so * Elle Magazine *
Funny, nerve-touching, intelligent and even heartbreakingly sweet. You won't read many like this one, that's for sure * Psychologies *
Her language is precise, her observations astute, her style punchy, her view of the world dark, but somehow accurate - disturbingly so -- Lucy Atkin * Sunday Times *
To call [this] "compelling" would be an understatement; it is a novel as compulsive as its characters -- Emily Stokes * Financial Times *
Homes manages a high-wire act in [this]. There are moments of outright satire... but these are always held in tandem to moments of real emotional engagement and insight... Sparkling -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *
A vitriolic satire of contemporary American society, often very funny and at times completely savage... Homes crafts a bold and genuinely disturbing attack on vanity, money-lust and our Faustian pact with materialism -- Joanna Kavenna * Literary Review *
[A] humane, comic story of a good man trying to do the right thing * Vogue *
A novel of great scope, taking some truly hideous events and spiking them with humour and realism * Emerald Street *
A tour-de-force of pitch-black comedy... Excellent -- Theo Tait * Guardian *
Horribly funny and unexpectedly uplifting -- Amber Pearson * Daily Mail *
Bleakly funny -- Claire Allfree * Metro *
Immensely likeable and sustained throughout by a vividly described plot heaving with believable grotesques... Homes has a feel for the comedic that is as well developed as her chillingly direct grasp of horror... A funny, fast-moving, picaresque, baggy satire -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Blackly humorous * Independent *
Capable, likeable, readable -- Sarah Churchill * New Statesman *
Brilliant... Homes draw[s] fascinatingly complex, flawed characters whose domestic situations run scarily outside their own control. Do yourself a favour and read this book * Bella *
Humane [and] comic * Vogue *
A bonkers yet quite brilliant book ... It deserves to be called a work of art -- Sarah Vine * The Times *
Homes plays with the substance of the American dream, and gives us a horrific, internet-age deconstruction... only connect, Homes tells us, and we can escape the nightmare of the 21st century -- Philip Womack * Telegraph *
Complex, nuanced and so engrossing that it makes you wish the real world would go away and leave you to read... A huge-hearted expansive book, simultaneously nightmare-black and extremely funny -- Lisa Gee * Independent *
She has a deadpan understated humour that builds line by line into comic intent -- Jeanette Winterson * Guardian *
[A] comic epic of modern America -- Sarah Churchwell * New Statesman *
[Homes'] dialogue is extremely funny, worthy of a stand-up comic-rapid and raw... Unrelenting and endlessly inventive -- Edmund White * New York Book Review *
Her biggest, broadest, most spacious novel yet, a dark carnival of American life in the 21st century... Cool, controlled... extraordinarily lucid -- Christopher Bollen * Interview Magazine *
One of the strangest, most gripping and satisfyingly ugly books I've read in a long time -- Thomas Quinn * Big Issue *
Laced with her trademark dark humour and emotional intensity, it's also a savage meditation on sex, violence, success, fulfilment and modern life... Epic * Diva *
This is the great American novel for our time -- Jeanette Winterson, Books of the Year * Guardian *
Wonderful, strange... at once dystopian and utopian, hovering somewhere between satire and sentiment -- Hannah Forbes Black * National *
One of the best new American novels -- Edmund White, Books of the Year * Times Literary Supplement *
The incendiary A.M. Homes exposes the black-comic mayhem behind the American front door -- Boyd Tonkin, Books of the Year * Independent *
Sit back and enjoy Homes's delicious black humour, her sharp characterisation, and thrilling narrative intensity -- David Evans * Independent on Sunday *
[A] compelling dysfunctional family saga... Homes doesn't chronicle US life as much as take a cleaver to it and relish in the blood-splattered aftermath -- Darragh Reddin * Metro *
I would not lose a word of her whip-sharp wit or unerring dialogue... Truly to die for -- Madeleine Kingsley * Jewish Chronicle *
A white-knuckle black comedy about the vagaries of 21st-century living -- Doug Johnstone, Books of the Year * Scotsman *
[It] is a savage and dizzyingly inventive satire on contemporary America, whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer... Inspiring * Stylist *
Truly original, highly topical and yet, I suspect, utterly timeless * Laissez Faire *
You'd have to have no sense of the absurd, and no sense of humour, not to be pretty impressed -- Theo Tait * Guardian *
Compulsive and authentic -- Lesley McDowell * Sunday Herald *
Touching and uplifting * Daily Telegraph *
Dazzling * Sunday Telegraph *
A bristly, bumpy ride of a novel -- Katya Johnson * Daily Express *
At once affecting and uproarious, the characters that Homes so deftly conjures will stay with readers well beyond when the final pages are turned -- Sonia Nair * Kill Your Darlings *
Searing -- Kate Mosse * Mail on Sunday *
It's strong stuff, and all the better for it * Guardian *
Horribly funny and unexpectedly uplifting... Sensational * Daily Mail *
Acutely observed * Women and Home *
A novel that has everything: laughs; sibling hatred; horrifying turns of events; online misadventures... and the general meaning of life -- Simon Schama * Mail on Sunday *
Darkly funny and compelling... [It] is the latest in a series of novels that display Homes' talent as one of the most consistently talented, funny and challenging storytellers of her generation * Huffington Post *
Hilariously clever -- Viv Groskop, Books of the Year * Observer *
This has all her mordant wit and close observation of flawed humanity -- Raffaella Barker * Daily Mail *
[A] deeply enjoyable tale of festering sibling rivalry gone horribly wrong * Pride *
A big American novel about family... funny and edging towards surreal in places. The book has a huge heart and an easy brilliance. A novel with everything -- Alex Hourston * Metro *
One of those rare delights: a weird, scary, comic novel that actually makes you laugh out loud -- Simon Schama * Mail on Sunday *
The wicked humour draws you in, but the cracking energy keeps you reading; there's a fierceness here that makes this tale of violence and family life quite unforgettable -- Natasha Walter * Stylist *