A.M. Homes on absurdity, satire, and the troubles of men

Send us Fan MailIn that esteemed group of soothsayers, we might  consider adding the novelist A.M. Homes. Homes has just published her eighth novel, The Unfolding, a wild trippy ride of a novel that opens on election night, 2008 and closes two months later at the inauguration of one Barack Hussein Obama.  Homes began the novel long before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, but much of it now reads more like non-fiction, an origins story of the January 6 coup, but with a novelist’s curiosity and a refreshing, caustic wit. She has said, “The oddity or the absurdity of everyday experience is part of what I’m capturing. My sense is that life itself can be so incredibly painful and disturbing that if one is to survive it, one has to find the humor in it.” There is humor, too, in Edward Albee’s one act play, An American Dream, one of the two works of fiction featured in this episode. The other is Richard Yates 1975 novel, Disturbing the Peace, a gimlet-eyed examination of a man in extremis.