book review the unfolding

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE UNFOLDING

by A.M. Homes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2022

If truth is stranger than fiction, this makes a strong case that it’s also a better read. Stick with the news.

When you’re the Big Guy, life is good. Sharp wife, devoted daughter, friends in high places, and (obvs) lots of money, he inhabits his privilege and prestige with presumption and ease. But when Obama is elected president, his comfortable perch at the top of the pecking order suddenly feels more precarious than preordained. A nation’s progress is the Big Guy’s existential crisis—and call to action.

Set entirely during the weeks between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009, Homes' new novel chronicles the Big Guy’s dual missions: to right the courses of both his country and his marriage. (One of these tasks will be easier than the other.) In the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008, stricken, enraged, and reeling from the “Hindenburg” election results, the Big Guy decides to put together an A-Team, a cabal of haves—“members of the good fortune club”—that convenes to shoot guns and go ballooning and plot a deep elite countermine to “reclaim our America.” While this happy plan is coming together, the Big Guy’s personal life is unraveling, and his tightly wound wife, Charlotte, is having a crisis of her own: “I forgot to have my life,” she tells him. “I’ve been having your life for a quarter of a century.” Set in relief to the jejune and tedious primary storyline, this complicated relationship is devastatingly articulated, far more nuanced and engaging. “Nine p.m. is prime time for bed, to be alone, to have themselves to themselves, to have finished the business of being a couple,” Homes writes, deftly explaining their early dinner habit and so much more. Alas, the blowhards in the how-we-got-here wannabe satire prequel keep bigfooting the B side: “Someone needs to grab this country by the balls and wake it the hell up,” the Big Guy tells his uninspired co-conspirators. Big words, but not nearly big enough to out-outrageous the footage, quotes, testimony, and exposés that have dominated American life since 2015. It must be noted: The reality of how we got here has already been extensively reported elsewhere to eye-popping effect and is far more shocking than anything here.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-73-522535-0

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by A.M. Homes

BOOK REVIEW

by A.M. Homes

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

IT STARTS WITH US

by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022

Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.

The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.

Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.

Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Atria

ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE | GENERAL ROMANCE | GENERAL FICTION

More by Colleen Hoover

by Colleen Hoover

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Kristin Hannah

by Kristin Hannah

PERSPECTIVES

BOOK TO SCREEN

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

A.M. Homes’s The Unfolding Entwines Political Satire with Domestic Drama

The “Days of Awe” author draws on real-life political machinations to produce a chilling what-if.

Our editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page.

Political satire finds itself on a dangerous collision course with reality in A.M. Homes’s The Unfolding, her 13th book—and her first novel in 10 years. Known for her preternatural ability to hone in on political flashpoints—from homophobia and parents coming out of the closet to mass school shootings—Homes dives headfirst into the minds of unlikely characters to illuminate society’s horrors. This time, Homes concerns herself with the perspective of a white, middle-aged, wealthy, conservative Republican donor to cast a light on the contemporary forces threatening American democracy. If this character leads you to think of the Koch brothers, you’re not mistaken.

The antihero of the novel is known simply as the Big Guy. No other name is offered. It’s the Big Guy’s big-footing that we follow from election night in 2008 until Inauguration Day 2009. This is a man seized with fear in the face of the newly elected first Black U.S. president’s message of change and hope. Through his very privileged perspective, Homes traces his recalcitrant desire to preserve an older face of power at all costs. Money may be no object in this endeavor, but it does put his marriage and his relationship with his teenage daughter at risk. The Unfolding entwines political subterfuge and intrigue with a painful family saga. It’s a propulsive book of conversations and confessions that reveal brittle truths about the ways politics and history divide our country.

Using time stamps and locations to mark each chapter of the book, Homes dispatches her writing with an air of classified information. On the second-floor bar of the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, where shock has now subsided into stark reality, the Big Guy meets Mark Eisner, writer and “social historian.” He finds a shared cultural and political kinship with 43-year-old Eisner, who provokes him to muse, “There is a moment when you have to be ready to take action. You can’t rely on others. This is the kind of story you tell your children; it’s about the night you woke up, realized that things were not what they seemed, and you did something about it.” When Eisner asks, “What are we going to do?” the Big Guy replies, “Something big…a forced correction.”

Their whiskey-fueled chatter sparks the creation of a collective of conservative operatives and dark money donors—beyond Eisner and the Big Guy are covert-military operatives, finance nerds, judges, and others. Their objective: to maintain the status quo of their father’s generation, a patriarchy that smacks of white supremacy. Homes draws inspiration from the Eisenhower Ten, who were a real life group of men selected in 1958 by President Eisenhower in order to serve as administrators in the event of a national emergency. In this instance, though, the national emergency has already arrived in the form of the Obama presidency. This crew fervently believes they must disrupt his administration through misinformation and fear. With dialogue reminiscent of David Mamet, the scenes with these idiosyncratic characters snap with terse, data-driven, wildly imaginative verve. They’re so strange, you know that Homes has done her research. It takes a shrewd eye and a wild imagination to cook up these men of limited vision and limitless means.

But this novel isn’t just political satire. It’s a deeply felt family drama about the disconnect between spouses, as well as with their children. The Big Guy didn’t arrive in Arizona on election night alone. Along with his wife, Charlotte, a coolly detached alcoholic, he’s joined by their teenage daughter, Meghan (her name a wink to McCain’s daughter), who flew west from her Virginia boarding school to participate in her first election. The Big Guy is stirred by this rite of passage. For Meghan, his grandiose bluster leaves her cold. It’s an anti-climatic event. “She can’t tell him that she finds the whole thing so basic that it is causing her a new kind of anxiety, the deep existential ache that nothing is as previously represented; nothing in reality is as good as the idea she’s been sold. She can’t tell him any of this because it would break his heart.” So much for Meghan joining the Daughters of the Revolution.

Sheltered by her parents’ wealth, Meghan has never questioned the ease of her life. She keeps a horse at school, her godfather works at the White House, and for vacations, she shuttles between her family’s Palm Springs and Wyoming homes. But this buffer of wealth can’t deny electoral facts: Obama’s victory blindsides her social circle. Rather than linger with the “stricken” faces of grown men and her mother’s spiraling condition, Meghan retreats to the hotel pool. Here she encounters Mark Eisner, and their conversation marks the beginning of a genuine friendship, despite their 25-year age gap. Unlike other adults in her life, he doesn’t demand a certain behavior, opinion, or emotion. She asks him, “Is it really the end of the world? Armageddon comes to Phoenix?” He responds, “It depends on what your world is. For some people the world just got started.”

While Meghan shakes her family’s prescribed political and historical narrative, opening her eyes to a new outlook on society, the Big Guy doubles down. Never mind that his wife’s subsequent suicide attempt necessitates a long term stay at the Betty Ford Clinic. Nothing is going to shake his resolve to unseat President-Elect Obama. As the novel’s tension builds, the Big Guy’s family bonds increasingly fracture perhaps irrevocably. Gripped by his authoritarian efforts, the Big Guy is blind to how his zeal also strips him of what matters most.

Throughout the book, one asks what motivates the Big Guy to remain so committed to this cause. He claims this work is for his family, but this is a man who hires Neiman Marcus to decorate his home for Christmas when no one in his family even likes Christmas trees. Confronted with Meghan’s notion of America as “an evolving narrative,” the Big Guy retorts, “If I was to dig into what you’re saying, I might call you a revolutionary.” Meghan responds, “Perhaps one should ask—is a revolutionary a patriot?”

The Unfolding: A Novel

Connected to both father and daughter, Eisner spurs both to question their passions. While she may not take as dramatic a turn as her mother, who leaves rehab and her marriage for a lesbian lover and new approach to life, Meghan attends the Obama inauguration with her godfather and considers other philosophies and paths. Meanwhile, the Big Guy won’t quit; “the Forever Men,” as they dub themselves, set their disinformation plan into motion on Inauguration Day and commit to reconvene on Independence Day 2026. Many of them will be gone by then, but the Big Guy sees a larger prize. A future led by his daughter. He aches so strongly for power to reflect himself and his cronies that he fails to see that just as he has no control over the electorate, he also cannot control what his daughter thinks. Making space to explore all the various answers to questions of patriotism, revolution, and country, The Unfolding is a riveting political novel framed by family and devotion.

Lauren LeBlanc is a writer and editor who has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair, among others. A native New Orleanian, she lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

A Sneak Peek of Oprah’s 107th Book Club Pick

Empowering Reads About Women Who Lead

I Wanted a Mother. I Got Dolls Instead.

5 Books to Give Your Middle School Girl

Edwidge Danticat on Her Uncle’s Dementia

10 Years of Oprah’s “What I Know for Sure”

Read These Books Before They Come to the Screen

29 Best True Crime Books

New Thrillers for Sweater-Weather Chills

Why Are School Librarians Getting Death Threats?

Books to Awaken Your Inner Ballerina

The Funeral Crasher

Southern Review of Books

Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus.

“The Unfolding” Explores How People Desperately Cling to Ideology in the Face of Alienation

A .M. Homes has developed a reputation for writing about horrible people. It’s not a competition, but worst of all would be the homicidal child molester who narrates The End of Alice , her controversial third novel, which was banned by a U.K. chain of bookstores. Close runners-up: the raging TV executive who kills his wife in May We Be Forgiven and the arsonist adulterer in Music for Torching . In six previous novels and three short story collections, she’s offered unflinching looks at ugliness, erring on the side of too much fairness to her subjects, with a stylistic panache more soberly deadpan than seductive.

Her seventh novel, The Unfolding , is an exceptional display of style with muddled sense. It tackles a timely source of ugly feelings: a Republican presidential loss. But it’s not the January 6th novel you might expect. Homes avoids the kind of wildly emotional characters that stormed the Capitol and sets her gaze instead on quote-unquote respectable Republicans at what might’ve been the twilight of their era. It’s the story of a major, mostly unspecified Republican operative, called the Big Guy, and the Big Guy’s family as they navigate personal and political (never far apart) turmoil from the night of John McCain’s election loss in 2008 to the day of Obama’s inauguration in January 2009.

The novel opens in Phoenix at McCain’s election-night party. The Big Guy is swirling his drink at the hotel bar, lamenting McCain’s impending loss, feeling a sort of motion sickness from Obama’s historic success. Another guy at the bar theorizes that he’s witnessed “a generational earthquake that splits the terra firma.” When the barmate asks, “What are we going to do?” the Big Guy replies, “Something big … A forced correction.” The Big Guy is determined to do what he’s always done, pulling strings to assert his dominance, and so begins his attempt at a conspiracy plot. Reading from a world that’s weathered stark and shocking reversals of that moment in time, there’s no doubt the correction will come. Instead, the question is: how much power does a Big Guy have anymore to force it?

The Big Guy assembles a motley crew of powerful men to plan the “forced correction.” Their plotting happens in bursts of bromance. After the group’s first meeting at the Big Guy’s home in Palm Springs, the men ride together in a hot-air balloon across the California landscape. The metaphor is obvious — maybe their “we will not be replaced” rhetoric is a lot of hot air. But it’s not strained, because these men also just like to do nice things together. They meet in more retreats to talk and talk. The Big Guy asks them bluntly, “Is trying to get back to our roots, to what made us strong, is that treason?” The dialogue is familiar, even quaint. Homes treats the men like twenty-first-century Archie Bunkers, representing a threat while defanging it. It’s almost comforting to imagine that America’s recent political horrors came from calculated top-down conspiracy instead of the roiling rage of the demos.

But the opening whiffs of a political thriller soon disperse. Focusing on the family, the novel reveals itself to be an awkward marriage of two mid-twentieth-century genres: paranoid conspiracy and wealthy suburban malaise. The Big Guy’s daughter, Meaghan, is existentially adrift at her D.C. boarding school, relating more to her riding horse than her peers. The Big Guy’s wife, Charlotte, drinks excessively in their many houses to manage feelings of helplessness. Homes brings gripping pathos to the family portrait. An evocative brush stroke: “Charlotte resents the responsibility of flowers. She feels like it’s her failure when they wilt. He ordered them anyway, hoping she can learn to live with something alive.” The Big Guy is not the bad guy he might’ve been. There’s no abuse, no scary domineering. He tries, in his way, though he’s woefully ill-equipped to give real attention to others’ emotions.

In their subtlety, the family dynamics offer clearer indictment of the callousness at the heart of a certain brand of conservatism than the overt political scenes. That may be why they take up most of the novel. Long stretches pass where one might forget a conspiracy plot is afoot. Family secrets are revealed, positioning the novel as a successor to Homes’ memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter , about her own family’s secrets. The family is treated not with total irony or horror, but primarily with pity. Towards the end of the novel, he tells one of his plotter friends, “For years I thought I was taking care of Charlotte, but it turns out that she was trapped, she couldn’t see past me to clear sky. I was living in my own world, built on the Ping-Pong table in my basement.”

Homes has often tried to shock before, and succeeded. But, a decade and a half after these historical events, our shock receptors are worn out. The Unfolding flops when trying to muster our last reserves. If camp is, per Sontag, “a seriousness that fails,” this is something like shock that fails. The conspiracy plot’s culmination, we’re told, won’t even happen by the present day. We’re given a date in the future to expect it. This alternative future/history feels more like an evasion. It’s not clear whether their plotting’s connected with the (actually shocking!) real events that have occurred since the novel’s endpoint. Is all of it benign group therapy or sinister radical action? It would make a difference to know.

Yet underneath this wobbly scaffolding is a finely wrought depiction of people attached to an ideology that hasn’t served them well. They turn to desperate attempts at domination because they can’t turn to each other. They don’t know how to manage their insecurity, their fear that the world is changing and they won’t be able to adapt. “It was all about me,” the Big Guy says in a moment of revelation, “my need to protect myself. What an ass I am.”

FICTION The Unfolding By A.M. Homes Viking Published September 6, 2022

Share this:

Posted by: Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson is a writer from North Carolina living in Brooklyn. He's written criticism for 3:AM Magazine and fiction for the Carolina Quarterly. He holds a master's in English and Creative Writing from the University of Chicago. He is currently at work on a novel.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Books, books & more books.

Straight to your inbox..

Sign up to our emails and be the first to know about new releases, special offers and more.

Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier. Sign in or sign up for free!

Hello Readings Member ! Go to the member centre to view your orders, change your details, or view your lists, or sign out .

Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021

The Unfolding by A.M. Homes

Reviewed by Nishtha Banavalikar

The Big Guy is a smooth talker, a networker, and he’s got a plan to take back control of his country. It’s the 2008 American presidential election, and the Big Guy’shorse, John McCain, has lost the race to Barack Obama. For the Big Guy’s entire family, congregated as they are with Republican Party leaders in a Baltimore hotel, this moment represents a morbid turn in American culture and a death to democracy. The Big Guy takes personal responsibility and, in order to reclaim their America from what they see as its descent into chaos, assembles a team of ‘men of fortune’ – their fortunes a result of ‘hard work and elbow grease’ and, naturally, a few unacknowledged million-dollar handouts from friends and family.

The Big Guy is the essence of every old, rich, white Republican, driven by the belief that he’s entitled to everything in the world. His entire life – his family and his social circles – revolves around his identity as a Republican. He spews rhetoric of the American Dream like a weapon, fighting tooth and nail for his conservative ideals despite their glaringly obvious hypocrisy. In this sense, A.M. Homes skilfully explores how the political language of concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘freedom’ hold different meanings in the characters’ lives and the detrimental impact this has on communities. When the reality-altering presidential election loss hits the Big Guy, he squirms to retain power. When it hits his wife Charlotte, she becomes obsessed with the life she was unable to have, and when it hits his daughter Megan, she begins to question everything about the version of that history she’s been taught.

The Unfolding details the slow descent of a family’s reality, one contingent on fragile political beliefs. Though times have changed drastically since 2008, and the coups discussed by the Big Guy and his vanguard are no longer fiction, Homes’ alternative history and its take on political bipartisanship still feels refreshing and eerie in its plausibility. Equal parts political satire and domestic drama, The Unfolding brings to life the liminal spaces between victory and loss, marriage and divorce, childhood naivety and adult reality.

Nishtha Banavalikar is from Readings Emporium.

The Unfolding

In stock at 5 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 5 shops

Sign up to receive our emails.

• Biggest New Books
• Non-Fiction
• All Categories
• First Readers Club Daily Giveaway
• How It Works

The Unfolding

Embed our reviews widget for this book

Get the Book Marks Bulletin

Email address:

• Categories Fiction Fantasy Graphic Novels Historical Horror Literary Literature in Translation Mystery, Crime, & Thriller Poetry Romance Speculative Story Collections Non-Fiction Art Biography Criticism Culture Essays Film & TV Graphic Nonfiction Health History Investigative Journalism Memoir Music Nature Politics Religion Science Social Sciences Sports Technology Travel True Crime

September 9 – 13, 2024

• Natasha Wheatley profiles Eduard Habsburg
• What do we owe to language in times of unimaginable violence?
• Laura Wheatman Hill digs into the NaNoWriMo AI kerfuffle

• Literature & Fiction
• Genre Fiction

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Unfolding: A Novel Hardcover – September 6, 2022

• Print length 416 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Viking
• Publication date September 6, 2022
• Dimensions 6.24 x 1.34 x 9.3 inches
• ISBN-10 0735225354
• ISBN-13 978-0735225350
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; First Edition (September 6, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735225354
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735225350
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.24 x 1.34 x 9.3 inches
• #2,237 in Political Fiction (Books)
• #7,323 in Fiction Satire
• #42,508 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

A. m. homes.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 25% 33% 21% 11% 10% 25%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 25% 33% 21% 11% 10% 33%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 25% 33% 21% 11% 10% 21%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 25% 33% 21% 11% 10% 11%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 25% 33% 21% 11% 10% 10%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Advertisement

Supported by

Monsters Are Everywhere in This Cozy Novel About a Haunted Neighborhood

In the journalist Dan Kois’s new book, “Hampton Heights,” a group of middle-school boys discover magic and frights in an unassuming Milwaukee enclave.

• Share full article

By Emily C. Hughes

Emily C. Hughes is the author of “Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch.” She writes about scary books and lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and cats.

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million
• Bookshop.org

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

HAMPTON HEIGHTS: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , by Dan Kois

In “Hampton Heights,” the journalist Dan Kois’s second novel — a comic, gently spooky ’80s tale of boyhood, community and Burger King — six middle-school paperboys venture out to sell newspaper subscriptions in a sleepy, working-class neighborhood of Milwaukee. In the process, they make some startling discoveries about their city and themselves.

The boys work in pairs. Enticed by the promise of fast food and pocket money, and insufficiently supervised by their distracted manager, they start knocking on doors around Hampton Heights and each stumble onto an unexpected or frightening scene. Sigmone, a thoughtful Black boy who goes to a predominantly white school, and Joel, a wealthy, obnoxious white kid, find Sigmone’s missing grandfather, who introduces Sigmone to their peculiar shared heritage. Al, a poor kid with a hustler’s mind-set, joins forces with Nishu, a nervous, nerdy child of immigrants, to confront a sewer troll who makes off with their memories (and Al’s prized Playboy). And Ryan and Mark, who are more thinly sketched than the other boys, spend longer than they intend to with a pair of kindly women who feed them cookies and tell them a story that’s equal parts fairy tale and prophecy.

Each pair of boys is allotted one chapter, their story unfolding in its entirety before we move on to the next pair. In a longer book, this might derail the narrative momentum, but there’s not an ounce of fat on “Hampton Heights,” which is a slim 190 pages. Nor is the plot really the point here, as charming as it is. The joy of this book is in Kois’s warm, thoughtful depictions of the boys and the neighborhood.

It’s abundantly clear how much affection the author feels for his characters. He understands that 12-year-old boys are often annoying and gross, but he also displays deep empathy for adolescent awkwardness. Closely observed details, such as the bonding power of Weird Al Yankovic, Nishu’s backpack (which he wears like armor) or Joel’s fart tape, bring these boys to life.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Review: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

Editorial note: I received a copy of The Life Impossible in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig is a heartfelt and adventurous tale that combines magical realism with additional sci-fi elements too.

Reading a Matt Haig book is like receiving a warm hug from a loved one. There’s so much kindness and empathy, and truth, in his writing. He truly cares about the characters, and while they go through some of the worst emotional pain, he always brings it back to full circle that people are human and make mistakes. Life is precious, and no matter your age or circumstance, while you’re living, it’s never too late to live your life and have a second chance.

I adored The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which I read during the height of covid. I believe it was the perfect book for the moment. As we were facing an uncertain future, it was easier to look back at the past. And I think most people have had a what if moment—what if they had made a different choice? How would life be different? That’s what the book explored and it resonated with so many people.

But with huge success, comes a lot of responsibility. And while Matt Haig is known for writing books quickly he took a big break. For the follow-up, he decided to focus on a place that has a complicated history for him—Ibiza. For more about Matt Haig and his journey, check out this interesting New York Times interview .

What’s the Story About

This time his protagonist is a 72-year-old English widow who has experienced unimaginable grief and loss. But when she inherits a house in Ibiza from an old friend, a new adventure awaits.

She books a one-way ticket, and has no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Grace’s Journey

The Life Impossible is one of my most-anticipated books of the year. So I went in with huge expectations. And to be honest, it took me a bit to get into the story. I was definitely wondering where it was going, as there’s a lot of initial reflection about Grace’s painful past.

But we have to know this past in order to know who Grace is and what she needs to overcome. So once that eventually clicked for me, the story flowed for me much better. I think I was just a bit thrown off by the protagonist, the dark past and the hints of a sci-fi influence. But it all does come together quite well.

Grace felt like an extremely realistic character. She’s someone you would pass by possibly not noticing her while looking at the produce aisle, as she kind of just blends in. She doesn’t want attention and doesn’t feel she deserves good things because of choices she made in her past. It’s quite sad and probably not a rare feeling of some people in their 70s and above. They may feel time has left them, and it’s too late for any sort of change.

But The Life Impossible , while it’s a fantasy tale, it really does serve the reminder that it’s not too late—you still can heal and forgive yourself, and embrace joy again. Truly very profound.

You’ll see why Grace needed to be the star of this novel.

I also need to point out that Matt Haig wrote this story from the perspective of Grace writing an email to her former student who came to her for help and advice. In doing so, she decided to reveal her big adventure. I don’t usually like the letter writing style for storytelling. But it ended up being fine, and didn’t take away from the larger story.

The Adventure

I found The Life Impossible to be an exciting adventure story. It takes magical realism and becomes best friends with sci-fi, and even a bit of fantasy thrown in. But all within the framework of the literary contemporary fiction writing style. Sci-fi and fantasy are not my genres of choice, but somehow Matt Haig makes it work for me.

One moment there’s talk about the life beyond Earth, and the next minute Matt Haig writes a truly profound section about how we all need each other.

But it definitely gets rather out there and dare I say, even weird and bizarre at times. It was not what I expected at all for Grace, but I ended up enjoying the ride. As I mentioned, I had a slow start with it but I’m glad I stuck with it.

I still prefer The Midnight Library , however, this is a very solid follow-up.

While it was a slow start, this became such a moving tale. It covers so much: grief, loss, acceptance, found family, Ibiza’s complicated past and present, impacts of tourism, mistakes, second chances, and more.

This is another great fit for book clubs, just like The Midnight Library . You all will have so much to discuss and talk about.

For book clubs, check out my discussion questions here .

You May Also Like

Advertisement

Free Newsletters

Sign up now

Modern, young religious life demystified in 'For Love of the Broken Body'

(Unsplash/Kenny Eliason)

by Bethany Welch

View Author Profile

Join the Conversation

Julia Walsh's  For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir is a raw account of her early years preparing to become a Catholic sister. Walsh begins the book with the chilling story of a terrible accident that occurs in the first month of her novitiate. (Those who are less familiar with religious life might consider starting with the glossary at the back.) She makes a short visit to her family's ancestral farmland soon after beginning the period of prayer and study required of those seeking to profess vows in an institute or order of Catholic religious.

Seeking a quiet place to pray and journal, Walsh heads toward a scenic overlook. The bucolic setting stands in sharp contrast to the challenging months of fracture and mending that lie ahead for her when the ground gives way, and she lands face down in a shallow stream far below. This portion of Walsh's tale unfolds at a rapid clip, punctuated by short, descriptive sentences that spare no details. "My tongue feels jagged teeth. I taste mucus and blood," Walsh writes.

Sr. Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. (CNS/Courtesy of Sr. Julia Walsh)

She then pivots from detailing the broken bones and wounds she suffered to sketch out how she came to be on the bluff that day. Her early college years, youthful experiences of church, a close-knit family and a burgeoning desire to experience more of God all bring her first to a year of service with an intentional community; and, soon after, to exploring what it would be like to be a Catholic sister.

Just as she recounted her injuries, hospitalization and healing, Walsh similarly spares no detail of her inner struggle to be seen and valued by men. Prior to religious life, this grappling lands in the arena of the commonplace, the stuff of paperback novels and Top 40 songs. However, once Walsh begins the discernment process for religious life, which will culminate in professing vows that include celibate chastity, the context for this grappling changes.

Memoirs can normalize common human experiences, or give the reader a peek behind the curtain of a closed world or insular system. The former is likely to be the draw for many of those who pick up  For Love of the Broken Body . Walsh's story gives shape to questions such as: What is it like to be a "nun" in the 21st century? What happens when you are preparing to commit to a life without individual attachments and meet someone you could see yourself marrying? How does someone in discernment handle doubts about making a lifelong commitment to a unique way of being?

With zeal and a hearty dose of humility, Walsh discloses her innermost thoughts. She writes ecstatically of her hunger for Christ and a longing for union. Sometimes, that union is metaphysical or spiritual, in others, it is decidedly physical. She imagines what would occur in a sexual encounter with a man she has fantasized about for many years. Some might be startled at what they hear in the context of religious life. Other readers, perhaps seasoned by their own experience of being human, will recognize the innate desire to be seen, to be touched, to be held, to share an intimate connection — desires from which Catholic religious are not excluded.

Given its themes,  For Love of the Broken Body might find a place on the bookshelf next to  Redeemed: Stumbling Toward God, Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding ;  Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People ;  Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics ; River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey ; and Cloistered: My Years as a Nun . All six memoirs by women trace threads of spiritual awakening and interior movement amid the very real messiness of human bodies, religious institutions, desire, grief and pain.

While similarly candid, authors Heather King, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Mirabai Starr, Sr. Helen Prejean and Catherine Coldstream spend more pages on the integration of lessons learned through this sacred/profane dichotomy than Walsh does. This is unfortunate. Presumably, there is much more to say post-vow profession when the commitments take on real flesh in day-to-day living. One might imagine Walsh having many more experiences of loving and being loved that exist within the framework of the vows, and thus deepening and widening her understanding of agape.

Walsh does a fine job of explaining the many features of Catholic women religious and the nature of an apostolic calling (versus cloistered contemplatives). She illuminates the necessity of being companioned in discernment by wise formators who can situate the doubts and questions of the young into the larger story of a long life. Ultimately, one concludes  For Love of the Broken Body with the sense that Walsh is authentically and truly herself, something that people of all faith backgrounds and experiences can appreciate.

Most Read Stories

#1 Enough already. It is time to ordain women to the diaconate

#2 Pope receives exuberant welcome at Mass with 100K Catholics in Muslim-majority Indonesia

#3 Members of shuttered Rwandan churches gather in homes as leaders quietly protest

#4 In Papua New Guinea, Pope Francis confronted with status of women in church, society

Latest news.

Medieval theology has an old take on a new problem: AI responsibility

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Seeing without distortion

What HGTV taught me about honoring the past

Sudanese Anglican cathedral is now a graveyard for civil war victims, archbishop says

Subscribe to ncr's free newsletters.

Select any of the newsletters below, then enter your email address and click "subscribe"

The Unfolding

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. 

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. 

Bookshop.org

Barnes and Noble

BAM (Books-A-Million)

Apple Books

 From the 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.

"From her first book onward , A.M. Homes has been challenging us to look at fiction, the world, and one other as we haven’t done—because we haven’t had the nerve, the eyes, the dire and dispassionate imagination. Gripping, sad, funny, by turns aching and antic and, as always, exceedingly well-observed and written, The Unfolding opens up another one of her jagged windows, at times indistinguishable from a crack, in the world that is always unfolding, and always vanishing, around us." — Michael Chabon, bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“ A terrific black comedy , written almost entirely in pitch-perfect dialogue, that feels terrifyingly close to the unfunny truth.” —  Salman Rushdie, New York Times bestselling author of The Golden House and Quichott "

“ How can a book be hilarious and chilling at the same time? A.M. Homes’s The Unfolding is a modern masterpiece, a scary immersion deep into the heart of American power. I will never look at a white man in khakis reading historical non-fiction in business class the same way again.” — Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

" A dazzling portrait of a family —and a country—in flux. A story about what happens when truths that once seemed self-evident turn out to be neither self-evident nor even true. A.M. Homes has perfectly captured an America as it lurches toward freak-out, and a family as it shreds the lies it’s been living by. The Unfolding is hilarious and shocking and heartbreaking and just a little bit deranged—in other words, it’s a book that feels like what it feels like to be alive right now." — Nathan Hill, author of The Nix

“ The Unfolding is wonderful. Compelling, funny, horrifying, and tremendously astute, this novel cuts right to the bone.” — Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionarie

“ The book is a disarming and heartbreaking family romance , a diagnosis of our present dilemma, and an exhibition of Delillo-sharp nerve and vision, told in dialogue that crackles and pops from the force of its internal contradictions.” — Jonathan A. Lethem, National Book Critics Circle's Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn

Reviews and Interviews

A.M. Homes traces the frightening (and hilarious) roots of GOP decay By Ron Charles

The Best New Fiction

The Unfolding by AM Homes review – a storyline undercut by events

What We're Reading

A Big, Brash Novel about US Politics Sarah Gilmartin

“History Really Is a Human Story” Yvonne Conza interviews A. M. Homes

A.M. Homes on Following the Money in Her Fiction Alex Higley and Lindsay Hunter

By Nick Duerden

By Ari Shapiro

Areana Podcast

Fiction: The Unfolding By Sam Sacks

Literary Fiction By Anthony Cummins

Good Reads Kerry Fowler

By Xan Brooks

In A.M. Homes’s New Novel, the Political is Personal By Jennifer Haigh

By Cal Revely-Calder

The Unfolding by AM Homes: it’s an Obama drama By Johanna Thomas-Corr

By Sarah Gilmartin

Interview with AM Homes By Anthony Cummins

Well Read By Helen Brown

A.M. Homes/Phil Klay

By Eileen Battersby

By Cathleen Medwick