New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.

This Book Will Save Your Life
by A. M. Homes


8.8

based on 21 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 10 votes
read user comments
rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

The Mistress's Daughter

Official Publisher Site

A middle-aged stock trader attempts to rebuild his life while the city of Los Angeles destructs around him in this satire.

Viking, 384 pages
04/20/2006
$24.95

ISBN: 0670034932

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Bookslut Angela Stubbs

The work here is that of a consummate storyteller. Homes’s familiarity with the city of Los Angeles is impressive and moreover, the accuracy with which she describes those who inhabit this surreal landscape is bar none.

Booklist

Homes is always riveting, but this juggernaut hits a higher mark with its aerodynamic prose, finely calibrated humor, and spiky characters.

Kirkus Reviews

An extremely likable book.

Library Journal Jenn B. Stidham

An engaging and timely tale told with a balanced mix of dark humor and sympathy for individuals enduring the foibles of everyday living. [15 Mar 2006, p.63]

Houston Chronicle Nora Seton

Comic and compassionate. The first-person present-tense narrative works well. And perhaps if you have lived numbly, this energetic story of personal salvation and the struggle to do good could be a wake-up pinch.

San Francisco Chronicle Ann Cummins

Hilarious.

Sydney Morning Herald John Freeman

Still, This Book Will Save Your Life contains the most realistic and hilarious conversations in any of her books.

The Observer Viv Groskop

It shifts your perspective on life and in the most darkly entertaining way.

The Guardian Frank Cottrell Boyce

This book will no more change your life than one of Anhil's doughnuts will but, like those doughnuts, it's packed with unexpected pleasures.

Daily Telegraph Kasia Boddy

The satire here is deft and funny, but often visits the usual suspects.

Daily Telegraph Judith Flanders

Whatever the intention, if Homes were not the delicate, refined stylist that she is, this would be well-nigh unbearable, but the acid-etched prose, the balance and heft that is given to each paragraph, and each chapter, makes reading the novel a surreal experience.

Salon Heather Havrilesky

Given the sharp wit and the firm grasp of missed connections and self-deluded tricks found in Homes' other writing, particularly in her vibrant novel of suburban dysfunction, "Music for Torching," you have to wonder why she has chosen to make it easy on herself with so many shiny, adorable characters, uplifting little shortcuts and conveniently timed acts of God.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

Strenuously life-affirming.

PopMatters John Davidson

Like Richard's luxury house, this novel is full of brilliant expressed details built upon shaky ground.

The New York Times Book Review Walter Kirn

Her miniature editorials on class and status belong in a 1960's Newsweek column. She scourges Hollywood in all the ways that make it tingle with guilty ecstasy.

Village Voice Rachel Aviv

The book, which draws on the most stylish strategies of self-improvement (Gyrotonics, meditation, inner-butt massage), is hopeful without being wholesome.

Washington Post Ron Charles

The larger problem, though, is the dullness of Homes's satiric edge. She portrays Los Angeles as a city collapsing -- morally and physically -- but it's Apocalypse Lite.

LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard

The novel’s most troubling weakness is its overall uncertainty of tone. Line by line, it’s expertly handled, but Homes’ decision to counter a tale of spiritual renewal with a landscape of geographic apocalypse ultimately feels like a cop-out.

Boston Globe Gail Caldwell

We all know redemption isn't requisite to a novel, but some sort of aesthetic raison d'etre is. I'm not sure why Homes wrote this book: There's nobody in it, no key event or setup, that you care about or want to remember.

Christian Science Monitor Erik Spanberg

Her novel, alas, does not include novel perspective. And the relentless parade of quirky characters and too-cute coincidences grate...This is "Get Shorty" - with a layer of flabby sentimentality clouding the picture.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Dreadful...The novel is also devoid of any verve or style the author might have demonstrated in the past. An energetic embrace of dark dysfunction has given way to a phony, leaden-footed rendition of spiritual uplift.

The average user rating for this book is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Bob gave it a10:
Will somebody please retire Michiko Kakutani, by force if necessary? Virtually every time I check out a book I've just read and enjoyed on this site, I discover an idiotic blurb blaring red at the bottom of the page, with Michiko's name attached. She also has an unerring ability of praising good writer's least interesting work. I haven't quite decided if "This Book Will Save Your Life" is a truly great book, but it may be the most purely pleasurable I've read all year.

Cory F gave it a9:
Loved the book, very enjoyable to read and really does explain fully the modern lifestyles of people living in Los Angeles and of course to some extent, New York as well. It loses 1 mark out of the 10 because i felt the charactors shown no general emotion at all, speech wise.. and was shown in a bland way. The narrator had to explain their inner-emotions most of the time and the charactors themselves shown none speech wise. The only charactors that did were Ben and Richard.

Gianni M gave it a10:
A little great masterpiece!

Franco F gave it a10:
Nothing to say. Just take the Michiko "the great" Kakutani's review, then translate it into the opposite and you will know the true about this fabulous novel.

Alan P gave it a10:
Excellent.

Discuss this book in our forums

Return to top of page

This Book Will Save Your Life by A. M. Homes

This Book Will Save Your Life
by A. M. Homes