The Unfolding

by A.M. Homes

From a writer who is always "razor sharp and furiously good" (Zadie Smith), a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country.

The Big Guy loves his family, money and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject--history--is not exactly what her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in power, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom and democracy--and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the same words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

In her first novel since the Women's Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender and devastatingly funny.

Genres: Fiction, Politics, Contemporary, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, The United States Of America, Humor

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 6, 2022

About the author

A.M. Homes is the author of the novels, The Unfolding, May We Be Forgiven, which won the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice.

In April of 2007 Viking published her long awaited memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, the story of the author being "found" by her biological family, and a literary exploration and investigation of identity, adoption and genealogical ties that bind.

Her work has been translated into eighteen languages and appears frequently in Art Forum, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Zoetrope. She is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb and Blind Spot.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

In addition she has been active on the Boards of Directors of Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center In Provincetown, The Writers Room, and PEN-where she chairs both the membership committee and the Writers Fund. Additionally she serves on the Presidents Council for Poets and Writers.

A.M. Homes was a writer/producer of the hit television show The L Word in 2004-2005 and wrote the adaptation of her first novel JACK, for Showtime. The film aired in 2004 and won an Emmy Award for Stockard Channing. Director Rose Troche's film adaptation of The Safety of Objects was released in 2003, and Troche is currently developing In A Country of Mothers as well. Music For Torching is in development with director Steven Shainberg with a script by Buck Henry, and This Book Will Save Your Life is in Development with Stone Village Pictures.

Born in Washington D.C., she now lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at page 175
I'm afraid this is probably a case of it's just me. I've read most (all?) of A. M Homes novels and liked every single one of them, and I had such high hopes for 'The Unfolding,' but it just isn't for me. Maybe I'm just too fed up with Dutch politics to appreciate a novel about US politics right now. Maybe I don't have a sense of humour, as I just didn't find it funny or satirical. All these rich, white, old men scheming are so boring to me. And as for Meghan, I find it hard to believe that an 18 year old could be so naive. I'm sure others will love this, as it is already getting some 5* reviews here, so don't let my opinion get in the way of giving this a try.
Thank you Viking and Edelweiss for the ARC.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Unfolding,” a sharp new satire by A.M. Homes, opens just after that national disaster that reshaped America in the early 21st century. The survivors are stunned, disbelieving, still surveying the damage while muttering, “This can’t happen here.”

That may sound like the shocked response to 9/11, but these are White Republicans in a Phoenix hotel reacting to the election of Barack Obama.

“The news has hit the room like death,” Homes writes. “It’s a rude awakening after hundreds of years and they’re taking it hard. It’s not just that Obama won, it’s as though the founding fathers were assassinated. The truths they held self-evident have become a moving target.” Their American Dream — the supremacy of White men and the sanctity of wealth — has suddenly shattered like a Tiffany lampshade.

“It’s an official apocalypse,” says a major GOP donor. “The world is going to hell and I am not pleased.”

That patrician speaker — provoked to profanity by this calamity — is the protagonist of “The Unfolding.” Homes refers to him only as the Big Guy. His net worth, like his nickname, is obscure but immense. He contributes enough to the Republican Party to be in the room when John McCain calls on Americans to congratulate and support their new president.

Such graciousness — not to mention political stability — now sounds like something from a different century. But for all his old-fashioned values, the Big Guy is. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Kate Southey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens when you wake up one day and realise you’re an asshole? This is the horrifying realisation that our protagonist Big Guy comes to towards the end of the novel and his awakening to this and his battle to understand this about himself happens over a mere 2.5 months.
I love A.M Homes’ work so it’s unsurprising that I adored this one. Her ability to put the iron fist of truth about modern society in a velvet glove of beautiful, lyrical prose is something few contemporary authors can match and this book is no exception.
Set between the day of John McCain’s November 2008 defeat in the polls to Barack Obama and Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 we follow the interestingly named Big Guy a Republican lobbyist and donor as he attempts to make sense of the changing situation political landscape and his own shock at what so many others saw coming from a mile away. I have so many theories as to why Homes chose not to give us Big Guy’s name; mostly for me I think it is to do with how BG (abbreviation for ease of use from now on) likes to see himself and be seen. He is a big guy in the party, best friends with someone who works In the presidential office and has the ear of The President, someone with an invite to every party in not just one town, but any town he happens to be in and the patriarch of family that includes a beautiful if alcoholic wife and a beautiful 18 year old daughter. He has it made, he’s a success and he is on the right side of political history which is a subject dear to his heart. I also think that by not giving BG a name Homes has allowed the people usually of secondary importance in his opinion; his wife, daughter, best friend to come to the fore. They are living breathing people with back stories, hopes and dreams, quirks and flaws while he is the ubiquitous good guy, the middle aged white man on whom the USA was founded.
As BG begins to understand his blindness to the changing political landscape and his role in it he decides to set up a task force if you will, of other middle aged white men and with terrifying accuracy on the author’s part he sets out a road map for the comeback of the Republican Party. Use of data harvesting, algorithms, creating your own news media separate from the mainstream, convincing the populous to create civil disobedience which furthers your cause but that you can deny having any links to or hand in is laid out bare in a ‘how Trump got elected’ and ‘there are more terrifying things to come’ horror show.
And yet Homes doesn’t turn these Republican men into what we in the UK call ‘pantomime baddies’ they are an engaging bunch, so different and quirky (allowing Homes’ trademark humour to shine) and all genuinely convinced of their way being the right one. If you met them in a public non political setting you’d enjoy spending time with one or more of them. I’m fairly sure that half of them would have been horrified by the appointment of Trump and the other half gleeful so they are not cliche cookie cutter characters.
On characters; oh boy does Ms Homes know how to create them. I fell more and more in love with Meaghan the more she matured and grew and the more her life began to come unmoored by her parents revelations and Charlotte her brittle fragile mother who BG genuinely adores is an absolute gem after rehab and I only wish there was more room in the book for more of her towards the end.
Truly lovely pieces of connection like Big Guy and Meaghan trading George Washington facts keep this from being a dry political novel. BGs dawning realisation that his wife, daughter and best friend have their own ways of looking at their lives together and that they aren’t just satellites of his own life and interests is poignant, as his realisation that the American Dream being made by white men from the right colleges is simply not the way the world can continue to be and that his age and the age of those around him in the party had both privations and blessings that modern day Americans don’t.
It would have been so easy for BG to have a road to Damascus conversion, the Hollywood ending but this is A.M Homes and she keeps it perfectly real right up to the fantastic final paragraph that had me hooting with delight at 2:30am.

[Rowena Mohammed · Rating 1 out of 5]

i didn’t really get this novel. I am not sure if it is meant to celebrate or satirize conservatives. All it really did was solidify my progressive values, and disgust me to the point that I was truly hoping a band of zombies would all of a sudden be unleashed on these self indulgent despicable people.

[Rusha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts out pacy and darkly funny but Homes does not stick the landing. The family drama is interesting but the larger storyline, a satirical account of a Republican conspiracy to reclaim power in the wake of Obama’s election, quickly grows tiresome. There’s only so many times you can read about the same bunch of rich white guys trying to out-alpha each other before it gets old.

[Trudie]

DNF - I think this *could* be interesting but something about it is not working - maybe the dialogue? Maybe the characters are not OTT enough?
I don’t really get it basically.

[John of Canada · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised that I enjoyed this so much. Being an old white guy, I do get a little tired of all things woke and snowflakey. I've read Kochland and I will be moving on to Dark Money. I am a big fan of Shelby Steele, Jason Riley and Thomas Sowell, all three writers who don't walk in lockstep with the lefty mob. Having said all that, I really loved reading this. It told a story, the dialogues were original and clever and it did give me lots of ideas of what to read in the future. I've read books satirizing Trump that were quite clever, e.g. The Cockroach, by Ian McEwan. This was a terrific read for me.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book about a super wealthy family and how they handle the loss of their candidate during the 2008 election. Super creative and unpredictable. I loved hearing the perspective of the wife and daughter, as well as the main character. It’s pretty reflective of what is happening now and a decent explanation of how we arrived here. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

[Charlotte Varcoe-Wolfson · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - Enjoyed the beginning about election night 2008 but then when it got too deep into old white men having secret meetings about the Republican Party I lost interest.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up knowing too many people like the Big Guy - blustery wealthy conservative men who saw themselves as God's chosen people. Some of them were decent people in the sense that they cared for their families, were honest, and could be cordial to a little white boy with fine ancestors like me, but they were all pretty dim. Others of them were not decent people by any measure, and they were pretty dim too. It was hard to tell whether their wives were as dumb as the men because their wives were trained to act as if they had no brains. Their children all followed in their footsteps. Sometimes they would have minions who had some limited form of intelligence, like Kissick and Metzger in this book, maybe even some fellow travellers like Tony who were actually smart, but not really on their side. So the whole gang of people here were very familar to me. They were the same kind of people who I had known and dismissed for years - old guard Republicans who had to be reckoned with because they had money and enough people who agreed with them that they could do some damage, but not people to be feared because I knew that the people on my side could think circles around them, that we all believed fundamentally in the same kind of country and that most of their group, like the Big Guy, wanted to be seen as fair and decent people so that they could occasionally be brought over to my way of thinking on important issues or they could at least be convinced to compromise by my team finding ways to appeal to their self interest. That was my perspective until I got to law school and met some conservatives who earned my respect because they were every bit as smart and articulate as any liberals that I knew, but none of those people made it into Ms. Homes' book. Of course that was then and this is now, so that the same people who seemed like the trogolodytes who we knew and could work with back in 2008 now seem to be on the other side of an unbridgeable chasm. It made me yearn for the good old days when the bad guys were just misguided. Ms. Homes seems to share this point of view because even though her characters are objects of her constant mockery, it's mostly a gentle mockery that is balanced by a recoginition of their good qualities so that her characters uniformly come off as sympathetic. I couldn't help liking them even as they set in motion a fifteen year plan for remaking the United States into a right wing paradise.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

The Unfolding is an alternate history (or IS it? O_o) set between election night 2008 when Obama is elected president and his inauguration in January 2009. An unnamed Big Guy, a titan of industry and powerful Republican donor is completely undone by what he feels is the ending of American democracy as he knows it with the election of a Black progressive president. He taps several like minded acquaintances to form a cabal whose goal is to create such a rift in America, mostly by sowing chaos and exploiting fractures and weaknesses already present, they can foment a revolution/coup to take back America for themselves, returning to what they believe are its true democratic ideals (which mostly seems to mean wealthy white men are unquestionably in charge). Meanwhile, under the Big Guy's own roof, his wife and marriage are spiraling, and his 18-year-old daughter, who has just voted in her first ever election, is realizing the real America isn't quite what she's been sold.

I was very excited to read The Unfolding a parallel/alternate reality seeking to fictionally explain our current circumstance is right up my alley. Ultimately I found this book somewhat uneven. There's plenty I really enjoyed about it, especially the central ideas which are something along the lines of how we as Americans seem to have different ideas about what democracy, truth, and freedom mean and we're going to have to reconcile that identity, and it left me kind of uncomfortably shifty eyed as to whether this cabal actually exists (I mean, it does in some regard, right? There are undoubtedly bad actors who are exploiting current events for their own power. How organized that exploitation is and to what end... well, TBD!) We spend a lot of time following what's happening with the Big Guy's family and while I'm sure it's all meant to be a metaphor of sorts, the characters are all rather flat and uninteresting.

But I did enjoy this story conceptually and thematically and really appreciated the peppering of political figures and current events. It's entertaining and readable and chilling in its plausibility just not quite what I was hoping it would be.

Thanks to Viking for the ARC.

[Phyllis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry throughout this political satire. It begins following the November 2008 presidential election in the U.S. and ends on inauguration day in January 2009.

Over that 2 1/2 month period, "Big Guy" Hitchens determines to restore the Republican party's control over the U.S. no matter what it takes, and he brings together a small group of like-minded rich old powerful white male cronies to accomplish that result. Meanwhile, his own family begins to both disintegrate and remold -- his wife Charlotte, with her drinking problem; his 18-year-old senior in an all-girl boarding school daughter Meghan, making her move from naive little rich girl to a slightly more independent manner of thinking; and all the secrets that Big Guy and his family have kept over the years.

[Nicole D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I typically love A.M. Homes books, but I think my nerves are too raw to be able to laugh about political conservatism. It's supposed to be satire, felt like non-fiction.

[Keen Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We remind him that in America democracy is capitalism, guns, and lower taxes.”

Homes is responsible for one of the funniest books I have ever read by an American author. “This Book Will Change Your Life” was an absolute joy of a novel and I can’t believe it has taken me so long to get round to reading another one of her books, but it was more than worth the wait.

“Are teachers less valuable than doctors? They get paid less; but without teachers, you wouldn’t have doctors.”

This has a seductive liquid flow to it, carrying us along at a lovely pace and there always seems to be something going on, with the potential for some dark and mischievous little tricks here and there too, which never fails to add a bit of comedy or the absurd, which is something I really enjoy about Homes.

“Turns out the idea of a perfect family is like the idea of the American dream-it’s all a fantasy, a story we tell ourselves so we can feel good.”

What this illustrates so well is how often and how quickly vast wealth and privilege are to embrace self-pity as soon it perceives a challenge. They cannot fathom the idea or possibility of a world where it’s not all about rich, white straight men and so default to victimhood. Anything beyond their narrow view of the world is simply incomprehensible and therefore deemed suspicious. These men forever act like children, both emotionally (unable to communicate like adults, unable or unwilling to move beyond toxic masculine clichés) and physically (playing with toy soldiers alone, firing guns together and forming secret boys clubs and giving each other nicknames.).

Homes shows the real danger of white fragility and just how toxic and pervasive it can be when it’s threatened. The big guy and his cohorts of dick swinging uber-wealthy are symbolic of the white, “old-school” American plutocratic patriarchy. We see these ultra-privileged brats, whingeing about an election loss as if it were the end of the world, rather than merely just a possible threat to their excessive privilege and entitlement. They do what they've been conditioned to do their entire lives, complain about it and act out like children, remaining drunk on self-delusion and self-pity.

We see that the big man who cannot even have truth, control or consistency inside his own small household and yet wants to shape and control the country and of course this is like the USA itself, so fixated in pouring so many resources into trying to fix the externalities of the world elsewhere, because that’s always a lot easier than trying to examine issues closer to home, which is a lot more confronting and difficult.

Homes has written a hugely enjoyable and highly entertaining novel. This is also a wonderful take down of contemporary America and those who run and ruin it and this was real quality lit fiction at the smarter end of the game and I cannot wait to read much more of her work and next time I won’t leave it so long.

[Sharon Umbaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set during the November 2008 election, the novel’s plot centers around a family crisis as well as the old, white guys’ club crisis. Difficult to like a novel when the protagonist is so unlikeable, but unlikeable he is meant to be and I couldn’t help but wish for his demise.

[Manuel Mellado Cuerno]

Entretenimiento del bueno bueno. Me duró escasos tres días. Qué gustazo

[Aoife Cassidy McM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part-speculative fiction (but close to reality), part-satire, part-horror show, this book, written by a previous winner of the @womensprize, is destined to be a bestseller and talked about everywhere I think. It’s not out until September but it’s one to watch out for.

It’s November 2008 and Barack Obama has just been elected President of the United States. The Big Guy, a rich, white Republican donor is incandescent at the result, and, perceiving the evaporation of traditional American values (read: white supremacy) and his own impending irrelevance, puts together a motley crew of old, rich, white men to formulate a plan to get American “back on track”.

Meanwhile, the fabric of the Big Guy’s family life is coming apart at the seams. His wife Charlotte is drinking too much and appears to have mental health problems, and his painfully spoilt, precocious daughter Meghan has some school troubles of her own, with worse to come.

This is a literary pageturner, packed with sparky dialogue, alternately comical and infuriating. There are some powerful, cinematic scenes in the book, and the sense of foreboding is inescapable; the closing scene is quite stunning in the sense that you feel it holds a mirror up to the last fourteen years.

It’s really quite brilliant, and awfully worrying for anyone who is familiar with the Koch brothers and/or who has followed the trail of disinformation and the assault on democracy in the last two decades.

A little too close to reality for comfort: not bloody speculative enough some might say! Highly recommend if you enjoy political and speculative fiction. Chilling. 4/5 ⭐️

The Unfolding will be published on 8 September 2022 by @grantabooks. I was delighted to read an advance digital copy of the book courtesy of the publishers via @netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.*

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about many things. It is a braided narrative that tells the story of a family coming undone. But as the family comes undone, it comes to know itself better. There are multiple awakenings and comings to consciousness. One part is about a conservative family whose father is among those rich, powerful Republican men. The other part is about the American political system and what happens in the 77 days between Obama's election and inauguration when a group of men decides they want to reclaim their version of America or democracy.

This book also looks at how we can deceive ourselves and convince ourselves we are acting for the greater good when we don't want to acknowledge reality. I kept wondering whether or not the Big Guy and the Forever Men would have done what they did, knowing that it would eventually lead to Donald Trump.

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...

[K. Daley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun and funny for about 100 pages, this book tells the story of a wealthy Republican donor, the Big Guy. Saddened and frightened by McCain’s loss to Obama, he goes on a quest to preserve the fundamental “American” values that he’s always believed in, but which seem to be in mortal danger. They are capitalism, love of family and the right to work hard and succeed. He recruits a group of kooks to sow distrust and foment revolution. Meanwhile his family, whom he really does love in a myopic way is falling apart. The kooks bloviate endlessly and his daughter falls into mini lectures on the “American way.” He’s boring and one sided and so is she. An unforeseen plot twist occupies 75 pages for no good reason. The only bright spot is the Big Guy’s wife who drinks to excess to escape. When that doesn’t work, she just leaves.

[Linda Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unfolding is pitched and listed as fiction but it reads like a real back-room political book that is only too easy to imagine actually took place. Older white men, secure in life with multiple dwellings and more money than they can spend are so flummoxed by Barack Obama's election that they scramble to find like-minded men who are just as worried about the continuity of white supremacy in America and begin to plan how to get America "back on track". Frightening in its clairvoyance and unputdownable.

[Meghi Dedja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given it 5 starts if I knew more about American history. Maybe when I re read it I will have more knowledge. That was, amazing. And scary, and very scary.

[Fred Forbes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this as an audiobook, a 13 hour slog. Story revolves around wealthy (self proclaimed) "masters of the universe" suffering great angst since McCain lost the election and horror of horrors, a black man will be in the White House. Story revolves around this group of wealthy white men plotting to return the country to it's roots - basically, move forward to the way things were in 1957. Some interesting satirical points, some interesting observations as to what they plotted back then and what is happening now but the characters tend to be stereotypical and the plot lines a bit forced. The story of the "Big Man's" daughter and the the secret she is finally given as she prepares for college was interesting and for me, saved the book from being a total bust.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A speculative history novel with an interesting premise that’s just a bit too talky for my taste.

The Unfolding deals with liminal spaces: between an election (Barack Obama in 2008) and the inauguration; between being a child and an adult; between not knowing and knowing a marriage is falling apart.

On Election Day in November 2008, Republican billionaire funder known as the Big Guy, his wife Charlotte, and their 18 year old daughter Meghan vote and then go to Phoenix to see the results with John McCain. When disaster strikes and Obama is elected, the Big Guy is stunned about the collapse of America and then stung into action to bring back the country that his brand of Republicans believes is the right way. Pulling together a ragtag team of rich white men - a judge, an accountant, a White House insider, a scientist, a communications expert, and so forth - they put together a plan for a revolution.

Meanwhile, Meghan finds that her simple trust in her world is misplaced. There are secrets that have not been shared with her because she was being “protected” like a child. As they are gradually revealed, she finds herself questioning and challenging her own identity.

Now as we all now know, the Republican Party swung heavily to the right and to the immoral and this change is presaged by the conversations and plans of the Big Guy and his cohort. Except is it? Of course, the writer has hindsight and knows what actually happens so is speculatively filling in the gap. It’s an intriguing idea but, for me, just drags on a little too much and to call it prescient ignores the obvious fact that it’s now 2022 and we know what happened. I did love the quirky characters like Twitch Metzger the ad man who forecasts the role of Twitter and makes candy in his spare time, but much of the policy talk is just a bit too inside baseball.

This rip in the worldview of the Big Guy is echoed in his family. Charlotte has felt stifled and corralled - the Big Guy’s views of women and their capabilities are not just old fashioned but also too parodically broad to be believable. When Charlotte reaches a breaking point, he finally realizes that what he thinks he knows may not be how things really are.

When I saw this was an “alternate history” I was frankly expecting something a little more alternate. As it is, it’s a speculation that doesn’t seem very far fetched at all and, while amusing, is not the out there satirical novel I was expecting.

Thanks to Viking and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

[Ruthie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely readable and nowhere near as cringe as I expected. I was expecting the main character to be a middle class future Trump voter - maybe a truck guy. You know, some sort of white collar, middle class guy who drives an F-350 for some reason. Just a simple insurance claims adjuster in an enormous contractor’s truck, so wide that the rear view mirrors fold out, and so high off the ground that the protagonist would teeter in and out of it on a series of steps on his way to gather supplies at Costco.

Nope! That’s not the Big Guy, who owns several homes, takes private jets between them, and sends his daughter to boarding school back East. This is screenwriter A.M. “Hollywood” Homes’s world, not ours. It’s a world of wealth that towers over us like our F-350s tower over toddlers and small animals. The Big Guy pulls several of the strings of the Republican party. He would never shop at Costco. He has employees to do his shopping.

The Obama victory enflames the Big Guy’s sensitivities. He sets out to spend his money in order never to let this happen again. Although his efforts are comical and expensive, they lead to SOMETHING. This, Homes suggests, is how we got Trump. I found the fiction to be very lifelike. Like I said, I was expecting worse.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. M. Holmes' latest novel could easily be read as biography. So much does the Big Man at the heart of this novel resemble Donald Trump that it is hard not to try and draw parallels with that real life and this fiction.

But it is fiction. In summary, rich white men upset at the election of Barack Obama try and find a way to put their country back on its Republican path. The Big Man and his family feature at the heart of this novel which is Big on political thought and actions. It is anchored though by the story of a father and daughter, the way power corrupts and can shade even the truth of relationships. There are a number of great setpieces in this novel but the final one in a diner near the end really packed a punch for me. You'll know it when you get there.

As ever I found Holmes' prose immediate, dialogue rich, and quite often propulsive. I very much enjoyed my time in this world, even if I found Big Man and his associates repulsive. Repulsive but all top real. Top stuff.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Candace · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first dipped into “The Unfolding” it took about three pages for me to say, “Yuck. No” But then I tried again and was initially engaged by the story but finally was not able to go any further. It sickened me. It infuriated me. If that was A. M. Homes’ goal, this is a five star novel.

The Big Guy is a wealthy conservative who, in his outrage over the election of a Black man to the Presidency, gathers like minded men together to make sure this doesn’t happen again. His college-age daughter is studying history, and imagine what happens when she finds that the history she is studying not not jive with the history her family espouses. This is ultimately a book about family but the other elements that push their way into the story were hard for me to take.

I’m not sure who this novel is intended for. I’m not even sure that readers who would cheer for the Big Guy would embrace it. I’m giving it two stars—it’s well written, and I tried twice to give it a go. I’m interested to see the kind of discussion this novel whoops up.

[Raveena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately really struggled to get through this one as well. I understand it was a novel based off being a satire and focused on commentary vs being plot driven however there just wasn't enough for there to bite off for me.

I did enjoy the look into a republicans mind post the Obama era but it just got a bit repetitive and by 1/2 way through the book I realised there wasn't really a big event that was gonna happen so I lost a bit of interest.

I really enjoyed the dynamic between Meghan and her dad - she did come across a bit whiney but I guess that is most teenagers. I don't think I enjoyed the dialogue enough to warrant reading this book.

Really want to like this but did found it a bit boring :(

[Josephine Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its intriguing when the teenage daughter is figuring out her values doesnt fit that of her rich influential Republican father and how eloquently she confonts him. Otherwise there was, for me, too much time spent on the deep description of desperate men not able curate space for people with different ideas.

[Andreas Willemse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, but a bit confusing. Not really sure what this book is about. It’s about conspiracy after the ‘08 Obama election, about rich people being scared of change and also about addiction, and a coming of age story. It never really chooses.

[Willem Hoekstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erg fijne Homes weer. Schetst een prachtig satirisch en ontluisterend beeld van Republikeins Amerika na de eerste overwinning van de presidentsverkiezingen door Obama.