Save me from myself... and use my Platinum Visa to do it! (This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes)

Member Name: RedBen

Product:	This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes
Date:	15/01/09 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Accessible writing style, strong secondary characters

Disadvantages: Unbelievable and uninvolving protagonist; lack of empathy

Richard Novak is a man apart. Literally. Living in the Los Angeles hills, financially sustained in his successes as a stock market daytrader, he has shed all meaningful contact from his life, eschewing family and friends in favour of an isolationist existence. Richard's rather aimless malaise of a life is suddenly interrupted by an indeterminable pain. Initial worries of a life-threatening heart attack prove false, but the scare is sufficient enough to set in motion a journey of discovery, the intimate and often surreal details of which becoming the story's focus. In a nutshell, this includes Richard broadening his social circle, learning the joys of altruism (if that isn't a paradox) and bridging the chasm-like gap between himself and his estranged son. Whilst spending lots of money.

Meanings behind this book? Well, it depends on what you actually think the author's intentions were in writing it. In dealing with weighty issues such as the causes of sociological and emotional detachment, Homes, in how she transforms Richard, is at least partly suggesting this book is a treatise on turning unhappy people into happy people - hence the book's title. From this, more serious perspective, the book fails. And the reason for this lies in the protagonist himself.

Because of the somewhat niche appeal of Richard - a rich, self-made man with few responsibilities - it is difficult to maintain any kind of empathy for his situation and thus draw any profundity from his altered outlook on life.

A rich man with problems? Already you're asking the reader to overcome certain prejudices that may inspire a lack of empathy. A rich man with problems who is able to solve these problems by spending lots of money? Okay, now you're really pushing it.

Yes Richard is a man in turmoil, but it is a shallow turmoil cured by shallow means, in ways that 99% of us cannot appreciate and so cannot really care about. Thus, in order to reattach himself to humanity he buys doughnuts and he buys cars, he rebuilds his house and hangs out with similarly self-doubting Los Angelians, eating expensive food and smoking pot. And that's fine; as an antidote to some of my deepseated issues I wish I could do the same! - but, from a reader's perspective, it serves only to ostracise.

Opinions on the book perhaps improve if your perspective on its purpose changes. The breezy pace and lack of any serious obstacles thrown in the protagonist's way suggests the reader is not meant to view this book in a serious light. Despite the story's premise, Richard is never truly tested, and so this book is what it is: a quasi-lighthearted meander into the thought processes of a disenfranchised man. In this respect it is perfectly readable. Homes has a warmth and accessibility about her writing that is enticing, especially when it comes to her secondary characters (with the exception of Richard's whiney, spoilt brat of a son, Ben), and she's not shy from throwing in the odd acerbic nugget to spice things up.

But, for me, the juxtaposition between the potentially heavy subject matter and the all-too-superficial way in which it is dealt with, is just too jarring, too detached, for me to recommend purchasing this book.

Unless you are held to ransom by some crazed escapee demanding, on pain of death, a copy of 'This Book Will Save Your Life', it is most unlikely that this book will ever actually save your life.

And what a pity that is.

Summary: Doesn't do exactly what it says on the tin