Things You Should Know: A Collection of Stories

by A.M. Homes

In this stunningly original collection, A. M. Homes writes with terrifying compassion about the things that matter most. Homes's distinctive narrative illuminates our dreams and desires, our memories and losses, and demonstrates how extraordinary the ordinary can be. With Uncanny emotional accuracy, wit, and empathy, Homes takes us places we recognize but would rather not go alone.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Americana, Collections, Novels, Essays

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2003

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

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the wonderful experience of reading Andrew Porter’s collection of short stories: “The Disappeared”, (one of my best reading experiences this year)….
I was still in the mood for more quality short stories.
My local friend, Meara, told me she loved this collection,
“Things You Should Know” by A. M. Homes ….
well….
overall — I liked Andrew Porter’s collection more…..
But a few of these stories (11 in all) …. were worth the price of the entire book.

So yes -mixed bag collection: a few terrific-
a couple pretty weird-
one plain yucky-
and a few more good!
— but
I’m intrigued by A. M. Home’s writing — enough to read other books by her. I want to try her novels.

I really liked the first story:
“The Chinese Lesson”
Susan is an architect- Chinese - but she fights the label and insists she is an American. She’s constantly angry at her mother, Mrs Ha. who is from the old country (China)….and she and her husband, Georgie (Jewish/caucasian) are on shaky ground with their marriage… but he is a sweetheart to everyone- a peacemaker type guy. He wants his mother-in-law to be happy. His wife and daughter happy. Their nanny happy.
The have a little girl name Kate (half Chinese) ….
Susan tells her husband that she doesn’t like the half of Kate who is Chinese
There is a ‘lot’ of heart, issues, anger, and ‘how come’s?
in this story -
Very engaging!

“The Former First Lady and Football Hero” is one of the other highlights ….
as well as the title story:
“Things You Should Know”

“Georgia” is the yucky one … (hint: used condoms do ‘not’ travel)

The other stories are a mix of everything ….issues involving kids, marriages, divorces, cancer, eating disorders, Alzheimer’s, sex, gay graphic sex, death,

So from love to creepy - it was all here.
But - I admire A. M. Homes writing and definitely would like to dig my teeth into another one of her books.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.M. Homes is so dark that I sometimes can't bear it. But this collection blew me away, especially the long story that fictionalizes Ronald and Nancy Reagan. It is fantastical yet realistic, hilarious and oddly moving. Actually I think that's what I like about A.M. Homes. She leaves me with a pleasant emotional confusion.

[Franco Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pronto, reseña.

[Lisa - OwlBeSatReading 🦉📚 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read five out of the eleven stories in this collection and I’m done with it now. The ones I did read, were, at best, mediocre. Homes’ writing is very good but I just found it all rather uninteresting. 🥴 I’d hoped for more as I found Homes’ novel ‘The End of Alice’ to be a very memorable read. These short stories weren’t dark or quirky, just boring to me, unfortunately.

[David Fore · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the life of me, I don't know why A.M. Homes isn't read by everyone. Sort of a cross between Sarah Schulman and Don DeLillo. Homes a great writer who knows how to create compelling characters and situations that are profound and often super funny. She gets pigeon-holed as a literary writer because she's so damn good, but casual readers interested in passing the time with a good book are likely to get what they're looking for when they pick up any of her work. This collection of stories is as good as any book to start with. Through rich narratives and closely observed interactions, Homes exposes the vagaries of the human heart and the strange expectations of the social order. The stuff hits home.

[Megan Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another stunningly twisted collection of short stories by A.M. Homes. The only reason for rating it four instead of five stars is because Safety of Objects is still my favorite. But this collection doesn't fail to disappoint. In typical Homes style, she mixes the typical suburban family life with dark, frightful twists and turns that one can only imagine in their nightmares...or their hidden reality. Another added bonus - a few of these stories take place in my hometown of the Hamptons, and Homes nails the "Hamptons" experience perfectly telling me she must have spent some considerable time there...maybe one of these days I'll run into one of my favorites authors in my hometown...

[Ian Laird · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t warm to AM Homes much, unlike many others. For me she’s a bit Roald Dahl, in that after a while you get something of a bitter taste in the mouth. She’s also a bit like Robert Aickman, ie weird without being interesting enough.

Perhaps the most accessible story is a sad one The Former First Lady and the Football Hero a meditation upon the post official life of a former president’s first lady, clearly the Reagans when the former leader is losing his wits, revealing the challenges for his wife of constantly being supportive, deciding when to be noticed and when to merge with the background, all the time in their world of permanent security details.

Curiously old now, this is a collection of stories originally published from 1994 to 2001. The stories start off OK but the bitterness kicks in soon enough, plus coarseness (smell of dog shit, boy pissing on a girl who won’t let him cop a feel).

There is another story featuring Alzheimers and the difficulty of achieving cross racial understanding: Chinese Lesson, in which Geordie tries to come to terms with his Chinese wife: ‘straight as a board’ and her mother who is the one suffering Alzheimer’s and keeps wandering off. She has a GPS chip in her neck.

A compelling mixture of voyeurism and practicality is Georgica where a girl recovering from a car accident inseminates herself at the beach.

[Seregnani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lei spalma una lozione sulla gamba di sua madre. Le mette una castagna in tasca, proprio come ha visto fare a sua mamma con sua nonna, per tenere alla larga il mal di schiena. Mette un'arancia che ha colto stamattina sul comodino, posandola su un letto di trifoglio. Protezione, fortuna, chiaroveggenza.
Porta la madre a spasso nel Giardino Alzheimer: non si vede subito, ma è un circuito, finisci sempre dove hai cominciato, ti garantisce che nessuno si perda.
«Lasciati fare una foto »dice lei, mettendola in posa vicino a dei rampicanti in fiore.


3,5 ⭐️ alcuni racconti più belli altri un po’ meno, ma nel complesso carino

[Michael Bohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obwohl in vielen dieser Kurzgeschichten ein gewisser Humor steckt, eine angenehme Absurdität des Lebens, ist das meiste von "Things You Should Know" melancholisch und traurig. A.M. Homes, welche in ihren Romanen oftmals die Hoffnung in den Verzweiflungen ihrer Charaktere findet, lässt in dieser Sammlung die Figuren gerne am Tiefpunkt stehen. Das soll nicht heissen, dass die Szenerien aussichtslos wären, viel eher wirken die beschriebenen Situationen real und nicht einfach zu überwinden.

Klar, A.M. Homes findet auch mit diesem Buch neue Wege, alltägliche Dinge in unüblicher Weise zu verwenden und vermengt dies mit einer emotionalen Tiefe, welche aus "Things You Should Know" ein Genuss machen, der ans Herz geht. Ohne natürlich die Grösse zu erreichen, wie ihre Romane - das verhindern die Seitenzahlen.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are only a few writers who do broken people quite as well as Homes – although both Barbara Gowdy and Jayne Anne Phillips come close. Many of Homes’s characters are slightly off kilter, alienated, uncertain of their place in the world either by virtue of age or by changed circumstance, in many cases they feel stuck, trapped or lost but unable to work out what to do. This is what provides the thematic core of this excellent collection of stories, many of which teeter on the brink of the grotesque and as a consequence are both poignant/tragic and funny at once (although not in a laugh out loud kind of funny, but a kind of tristesse – perhaps in this case best understood as a kind of melancholic comedy/absurdity).

One of Homes’s great strengths is her ability to write children and adolescents (this is the better parallel with Phillips) in a way that blends naivety with worldliness, liminality and out-of-placeness with plans and desires (these complex children appear throughout her fiction), providing the core of 4 of the stories in this collection. The other recurring motif in her fiction – most obviously in Music for Torching – is domestic dystopia, central to several other pieces in this collection. In both these motifs there is a powerful sense of people trying to be somewhere or something else – the character who wants to die, so he says, but in the end wants to live but doesn’t know how; the woman who pursues a unique path to conception, inspired by her grandmother who “would never have gotten married if [she] could have gotten out of it”, or the character in the (very brief) gorgeous title story who is sure of having missed the day in 4th grade when the teacher gave out the list of ‘things you should know’ and whose life is therefore incomplete.

There are two stories that don’t quite fit this framework – but fit the book; ‘The Whiz Kids’ – less dystopian than downright bleakly malignant, and ‘The Weather Outside is Sunny and Bright’ about a shape-shifting forensic architect. In a strange way, these two-that-don’t-quite-fit remind us of the richness of Homes’s oeuvre, and shake us as readers (or perhaps me as a reader) out of the view that she is an author of slightly discombobulated families. But perhaps the most potent stories are ot the ones of not-quite-fitting but of all to believable tragedy – the 12 year old boys whose summer is disrupted by death, not of someone they know, but by someone they know, and the closing story, ‘The Former First Lady and the Football Hero’ – a not even disguised tale of Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s, which includes perhaps the exchange of the collection; he asks if he had an affair, she replies, ‘Iran Contra?’.

As with so much of the rest of Homes’s work (including her work on The L Word), this collection is gorgeous, poignant and a reminder that she is not just, as Zadie Smith once described her ‘a writer’s writer’, but one of the great contemporary authors who deserves to be much more widely read. These are what the short story should be, powerful, sharply insightful and more than just a little disturbing!

[Spike · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are only a few good stories in here, which serve as bookends for this largely uneven collection. The best of the lot are "Remedy", "The Former First Lady and the Football Hero" (which appeared in Zoetrope), and my favorite, "Rockets Around the Moon". "Rockets" is an insightful look into the world of children who are effectively abandoned by selfish parents. In this tale, the protagonist is swept up into a neighboring families tragedy even as he desperately allows them a place as his surrogate family. "The Former First Lady" is interesting, although it carries an undercurrent of anti-Republican snarkiness I found distracting. The other tales have a common theme of women who are mostly unbelievably cold towards their male partners, or are shockingly sexual--nearly pornographic such as "Whiz Kids"--in nature. Sexual scenes must earn their keep, particularly in a short story, and in this collection they simply don't. It's as if Homes simply wanted to shock us, or distract us so that we don't notice the story is simply not very good.
But the typical reader of collections such as this is more discerning than that.

[Chris Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the interests of full disclosure I should begin by saying that I am a HUGE fan of AM Homes work. May We Be Forgiven, This Book Will Save Your Life, and, above all, The End of Alice should be at the top of everyone's must read list in 2019.

Things You Should Know is a gritty and unnerving  collection of short stories and while it's not up their with her greatest works, there is enough here to keep you thoroughly entertained.

For me, the joy of an AM Homes story is the way that she marries the macabre with the mundane, the disfunctional with the domestic, and in Things You Should Know she does this to devastating effect.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't quite finish this. Homes likes to shock us, from a setting of mundane suburbia. This can be fun, but since things are rarely shocking and happy, and the book arrived at a less than happy time, I decided to let it go.

An example story, our protagonist, dealt back and forth between well meaning but inattentive divorced parents, finds grounding in his normal friend's family. When their father kills a child in a driving accident, and subsequently himself, the friend loses it on the ferris wheel. There's no peace anywhere, I guess. Great.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is that a dog or a sheep? A wolf in sheep’s clothing is one way to describe Homes’s writing. The surface is not the guts. Also, it must be said, this collection is not The Safety Of Objects.

[Joshua Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Safety of Objects is one of my favourite short story collections. but this 2nd collection by A M Homes is just ' fine '. a mixed bag. some of my thoughts:

Whizz Kids reminded me of Dennis Cooper, whose work I LOVE, but had a shit ending, which made the whole story seem pointless.

Rockets to the Moon was funny and sad but it felt like new ideas or directions were introduced and then not followed, which was frustrating.

The final story was boring as hell.

I really liked the premise of Georgica, it's creepy and weird which I like, but for some reason it didn't fully land with me.

Please Remain Calm is soooooo good, I loved this story. so am glad I read the book just for this one story

[El Convincente · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandonado después de leer la mitad de los relatos. Podía haberlo abandonado antes, la verdad.

[Juan Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 pts

[Núria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reconozco que probablemente leer los cuentos de A.M. Homes después de haber leído los de Amy Hempel es un poco injusto, porque las comparaciones pueden ser odiosas y crueles. Aún así, cuando en una colección de cuentos no hay ninguno que me produzca auténtica envidia ni ninguno que hubiera deseado poder escribir yo, es que algo va mal. Confieso que ya antes había intentado leer ‘Cosas que debes saber’ pero había fracasado, aunque ahora veo que (en parte) mi problema era que empecé por el cuento más desagradable pero con el título más atrayente para mí (el de los presuntos niños prodigio). Me ha desagradado tanto o incluso más que la primera vez. La verdad, no me apetece para nada leer un cuento cuyo clímax sucede cuando un gilipollas abusa de una chica y se le mea encima.

Éste es mi mayor problema con A.M. Homes que a veces parece que quiere ser desagradable sólo para ser desagradable, de forma totalmente gratuita, o como mucho para de pasada resultar polémica, que es algo que siempre queda muy guay, pero en el fondo yo no veo nada detrás. Otro cuento también bastante desagradable es el de la mujer que se insemina ella solita con el semen que recoge de los preservativos tirados por otras parejas. En fin, se supone que la pobre mujer tuvo un accidente muy grave y que tenemos que compadecernos por ella y todo el rollo, pero la verdad es que toda la historia me parece chapucera, gratuita y manipuladora.

Luego hay un par de cuentos con una shapeshifter, que creo que pretenden ser poéticos y tal, pero que a mí me han parecido ridículos y tediosos. Después, hay unos cuantos relatos que no están mal, pero que son bastante olvidables. A veces me da la sensación que para que un editor te publique un libro de relatos tiene que haber uno sobre el cáncer y otro sobre parejas que se rompen. Aquí A.M. Homes ha unido los dos tópicos en un solo cuento y el resultado no está mal, pero ya se ha hecho antes millones de veces y no creo que aporte nada nuevo. También está el tópico del hombre que quiere morir hasta que tiene una experiencia en que la está a punto de palmar y luego se da cuenta que quiere vivir. También con una serie de imágenes desagradables de lo más gratuitas y todo él demasiado previsible.

Hasta aquí ha habido tres párrafos de cosas que no me han gustado, ahora viene uno de cosas que sí que me han gustado. Como veis no son muchas pero espero que notéis la delicadeza de ponerlas al final para que sea con lo que os quedéis. Os juro que yo no quiero ser cruel de forma gratuita. Vamos allá. Me gusta el cuento sobre el niño que va a pasar las vacaciones en casa de su padre divorciado, pero que en realidad se pasa más tiempo en casa de los vecinos que son una familia normal y por eso los adora, porque está cansado de las pijerías de su madre y lo alternativo que es su padre, tiene un punto de nostalgia y de final de infancia que está realmente conseguido. El del presidente Reagan jubilado y aquejado de alzheimer es original, divertido y con un punto amargo, realmente bueno y la verdad es que me encantan todos los relatos que ficcionalizan vidas de políticos (estoy pensando básicamente en el ‘Lyndon’ de David Foster Wallace). También me ha gustado mucho ‘Remedios’, que es muy Carver, muy “en apariencia cuenta algo banal pero dice mucho”. Y el mejor creo que es el que da título al libro; es evocador, breve, simple e inteligente.

Resumiendo, de 11 cuentos, cuatro me han gustado (pero sin llegar a entusiasmarme), tres no me han hecho ni fu ni fa, y los restantes los he odiado. Demasiado poco para poder decir que el libro me ha gustado. Aún así, me alegro de haberlo leído/terminado, haberme fabricado mi propia opinión y poder pasar a otra cosa.

[Miguel Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Los relatos de A.M. Homes son especiales, no se parecen en nada a cualquier otra cosa, siquiera a ellos mismos: cada uno es diferente. Pero no va tanto por ver qué tan impresionante es el argumento del próximo cuento(aunque también lo tiene) sino lo suyo es el desarrollo, lo que hace es Escritura Creativa de Tratamiento. Parece que cada frase fue construida de forma sensata, pensando en cuál era la palabra exacta para producir la sensación deseada y/o comunicar alguna situación. Esto, con unos personajes que tienen la intención de hacer algo, lo que sea, pero que no siempre tienen la capacidad o no siempre son ellos los adecuados para realizarlo.

Estos relatos, todos, tienen una calidad increíble —unos en mayor medida que otros. Pero incluso el peor cuento es bueno, aceptable. Y no infumable como los de muchos escritores—. Mi reacción por saber cómo construía estas historias no era de intriga, de la curiosidad que imprimiría un Donald Barthelme, más bien era de admiración.
Dicho sea de paso, para un escritor producir un relato bueno no es nada fácil. Ahora, hacer muchos relatos buenos, menos. De este tipo de escritores, solo me viene a la mente Etgar Keret. Pese a todo, A.M.Homes tiene la capacidad de mostrar la bondad, habla de como ser más considerados y conscientes con lo que, afortudanamente, somos y tenemos. Claro que esto no es tan aparente como lo muestra George Saunders ni tampoco lo dicta en plan "¡Esto se debe hacer así. Y ya!". Solo muestra la situación y cada quien lo ve como cree.

Difícil mencionar las historias que más me gustaron, seré molesto de nuevo, todas son buenas. En fin, para destacar: "La ex primera dama y el héroe del fútbol americano", "El remedio" y "Afuera el tiempo es brillante y soleado". Me gustaron mucho, por orden: "Cohetes alrededor de la luna", "Georgica", "No molesten" y "En una colchoneta, flotando en el agua".

En conclusión, A.M.Homes es una escritora por demás interesante, con manejo del lenguaje y los tiempos, personajes curiosos que no están para agradar pero a veces llegan a hacerlo. Sus historias —con una importancia destacable— deben ser leídas sí o sí.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me enamoré profundamente de A. M. Homes cuando leí su relato “Una Barbie de carne y hueso”. Decía de él Foster Wallace que era de sus relatos preferidos. Todos los años se lo leía a sus alumnos. No le faltaba razón. “Todo lo que has de saber” es un libro de relatos impregnado de forma innegable por el sello Homes. Esto quiere decir que es irrelevante lo que cuenta, ni siquiera es importante cómo lo cuenta. El antiguo y tedioso debate de la forma y el contenido quedan superados en la literatura de Homes. El mayor de valor de lo que escribe está en la relación sadista que establece con sus personajes. Los crea solo para hacerlos sufrir. Para profundizar en ellos; no en el punto de vista de su psicología, como pensaría un lector de los rusos del s. XIX, sino para llevarlos al límite, para convertirlos en pequeñas ratas de laboratorio a los que infringir una y mil tropelías, para constatar cuando estalla toda la miseria del ser humano.

[Haley Petcher Bynum]

I don't think I'm going to rate this book because I don't know how.

A.M. Homes is an excellent writer. I love her style, and her characters feel so real to me. However, sometimes the stories are too much for me. They're intriguing, but they can also be sort of...casually grotesque and disturbing, particularly in a sexual manner. (That's probably the wrong way to say it, but it's what I have right now.) Still, her investigation of the ugliness in humanity is fascinating.

There are also some more beautiful stories, like "Things You Should Know." I love this story, which is why I bought the collection.

If you enjoy Things You Should Know, you should definitely read The Safety of Objects. Every story in that collection seems to focus on the objectification of something or someone.

[Nurshafiqa · Rating 3 out of 5]

picked this book because the title sounds interesting. and there's some sort of sheep-dog hybrid which looks quite cute. anyway since i'm too lazy to write a proper review, i'll just share some thoughts.

okay so the book OVERALL, was.. okay. there's a few stories inside that stands out, and a few that left me thinking, "what?". actually.. truth be told, i read this book only when i had absolutely nothing to do. it was not the kind of book that made me genuinely want to read, that i specially made time for.

3 stars. i liked it enough that i wouldn't mind reading more of the author, a.m holmes's work. if i had to.

[Josie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not terribly impressed with these stories. Although most were raw with emotion and brutally honest - which I can appreciate - the same theme permeated the entire volume (save for one story, which happened to be the best in my opinion). There are only so many times an author can explore suburban dissatisfaction, malcontentment, and general detachment from life before it becomes tedious drivel. Save for the title story, "Things You Should Know" which is a 2 1/2 page brilliant little piece, all the stories and characters seemed to meld into one, the endings delivered no surprise or punch, and the stories were boring and predicable.

[Dylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Depressing...in a boring way? Do I really want to read about the suburbs with self-defeated characters who lack the fantastic and eat away at their brains like wandering neurotic zombies? Not my cup of self-defeated relationship torn middle class america--there's more interesting things to talk about.

[Simon A. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Homes at her warped best. She really impressed me with this collection, especially with the brilliant short story "Do Not Disturb" which later was included in the O'Henry Awards anthology. Homes has a vibrant imagination and her subjects and characters always shine on the page.

[Sheri LaVigne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in love with A.M. Homes. I ended up savoring these stories as long as I could, but like any good addiction I devoured them. This is the kind of writing I'm envious of people to have the first experience of.

[Oryx · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.756 - my least favourite of her works so far and certainly not her finest first collection.

Still great, though.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, disturbing but wonderful stories - Homes is a writer whose stories are first rate - as her novels - but I place the stories first. Read these and experience a wonderful, powerful talent.

[Javier Egea · Rating 5 out of 5]

llevaba mucho tiempo sin obsesionarme tanto con un libro . he pensado en él mientras lo leía, pero también se ha quedado en mi cabeza cuando no, mientras me lavaba los dientes, mientras hacía cola en la frutería, mientras pasaba las horas en el autobús, cuando estaba solo y cuando estaba con gente y la gente se callaba y yo me ponía a recordar algunas escenas en concreto . si hay algo que disfruto de la literatura es cuando esta se incrusta en la vida de la persona que lee . lo que quiero decir con esto es que he mirado a la gente de una forma diferente mientras leía este libro y después de terminarlo, me he fijado en sus caras, he escuchado sus conversaciones, me he imaginado a qué se debían algunas de sus expresiones y me han dado ganas de escribir sobre el motivo de esos gestos . también me ha dado ganas de leer más a a. m. homes, de investigar más sobre el cuento norteamericano, he pedido como regalo la obra completa de cheever y he querido borrar todo lo que he escrito nunca para intentar acercarme un poco a esta óptica, a esa forma de mirar . no sé : ha sido una experiencia tan estimulante . creo que la última vez que me sentí así fue cuando descubrí a mónica ojeda en 2020 o a sara mesa en 2019, así que estoy contentísimo, igual de contento que los niños el día de reyes cuando abren los regalos y solo quieren jugar con ellos todo el rato . qué bien que los libros puedan alcanzar estas dimensiones, qué algo tan sencillo y sin embargo qué difícil de alcanzar <3

[Javier Jiménez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Como en muchas otras ocasiones, empecé el libro sin saber mucho de la autora y menos del libro en sí (para evitar prejuicios y falsas expectativas), solo había leído algunos comentarios interesantes sobre el estilo de Homes. Sin embargo, aún sin esperar demasiado del libro me decepcionó. El libro consta de 11 relatos, de 30 páginas o menos cada uno, y a pesar de que las historias son de géneros distintos, ninguna me atrapó por completo.

En la mayoría la historia empieza sin mucho detalle, como si entraras de repente a una sala en donde un grupo de gente está en medio de una conversación y poco a poco (muy poco a poco) te vas enterando de qué trata todo. Siento cierto nivel de presuntuosidad, afán de sentirse original o incluso graciosa en sus historias pero al final nunca me convenció del todo. Simplemente no fue mi estilo preferido.

Los relatos más pasables, de acuerdo a mi gusto, fueron "La lección china", que es una historia con tintes cómicos sobre una suegra anciana que siempre se fuga constantemente de su casa y "El remedio" en donde una mujer trata de mejorar la relación con sus padres pero su paranoia termina empeorando las cosas, también con ciertos toques de humor.

En fin, no es un libro que recomendaría y creo que me lo pensaría dos o tres veces antes de volver a leer a A.M. Homes, aunque igual he escuchado buenas cosas de sus novelas.