The Safety of Objects
Book | A. M. Homes
A. M. Homes stuns with bleak visions of American life.
To read A. M. Homes' short story collection The Safety of Objects is, in a sense, to enter a world that isn't safe. A married couple smokes crack after dropping their children off at their grandmother's house; a man kidnaps a young boy only to grow tired of him; a sexually-obsessed teenage boy administers Valium to his sister's Barbie doll. Yet Homes doesn't set out to show a dark subculture of the United States so much as expose the regular cruelty within it. Viciousness seems to be the unifying force of these incisive stories, and it's a viciousness inextricably linked with familiarity, such as when a woman who has lived with her husband too long tells him he smells terrible or when a young boy routinely calls the overweight girl he secretly fondles "Chunky." That this kind of behavior has become second nature to her characters is the greatest horror, yet Homes never flinches. The Safety of Objects shows the terrifying gothic shadows behind everyday American life.
-
Books Review
Music for Torching
A. M. Homes -
Books Review
The Wapshot Chronicle
John Cheever -
Books Review
Ugly Man
Dennis Cooper -
Books Review
Anywhere but Here
Mona Simpson -
Books Review
Thumbsucker
Walter KirnA thumb-sucking, pill-popping, Bible-toting joyride through middle-American ennui.
>> -
TV & Film Review
American Beauty
Sam Mendes
