Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer with a murderous temper. They have been uneasy rivals since childhood. Then one day Georges loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. In May We Be Forgiven Homes gives us a darkly comic look at 21st century domestic life
- at individual lives spiraling out of control bound together by family & history. The cast of characters experience adultery accidents divorce & death. But this is also a savage & dizzyingly inventive vision of contemporary America whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer
- the strange jargons of its language its passive aggressive institutions its inhabitants desperate craving for intimacy & their pushing it away with litigation technology paranoia. At the novels heart are the spaces in between where the modern family comes together to re-form itself. May We Be Forgiven explores contemporary orphans losing & finding themselves anew; & it speaks above all to the power of personal transformation
- simultaneously terrifying & inspiring.