I nearly gave up. Over privileged Americans casually
destroying people’s lives. No one seemed to have any genuine feelings for
anyone. The characters felt sketchy, and they floated around in an affectless,
druggy trance. Why should I care about any of them? Why should I be interested
in their lives? Well, I think that question occurred to A.M Homes too. The
first part of the novel was published as a short story, and in deciding to
continue it, to extrapolate, to follow these people’s lives, she chose to
address those two questions. How do you make your main character sympathetic?
Have him be kind to children, old people and animals, give him issues with his physical and
mental health. How do you make him interesting? Make him have a great deal of
sex. I'm sure it wasn't quite that mechanical, but that's what happens - and it works. As the novel develops, it becomes all about absolution, and the main character sort of inflates from the two dimensional
bore of the beginning into a human being with depth, who stops floating and makes
decisions, some of them flawed but most of them interesting. You read on,
wanting to find out what he’ll do next, what will happen to him next, where he’s
going to end up. Story is important, but what’s more important is who is making
that story happen, who it's happening to. Character. It’s all about character.
One note. My copy is plastered with reviews which call the
book ‘Extremely funny’, ‘Horribly funny’, ‘Brilliantly funny’. These people
must be very easily pleased. It raises the odd smile, and has a nice,
surprising quirkiness, but ‘Hilarious’? No.
