It didn't feel right just reviewing this as a whole without adding the individual ratings as well:

- Adults Alone: 3.5/5
- Looking for Johnny: 5/5 amazing, loved it so much. Probably my favorite
- Chunky in Heat: 3/5.
- Jim Train: 3/5
- Yours Truly: 3/5. Think it would have been better if it were longer.
- Esther in the Night: 5/5
- Slumber Part: 3.5/5. Also think could have been longer.
- The I of It: 4.5/5
- A Real Doll: 5/5 ( )

The stories in this book are shocking, but Homes didn't write these stories purely to shock. ( )

A.M Homes is somewhat of a cross between Alissa Nutting's Tampa and Brett Easton Ellis.

Actually, she's an author all her own. She commands your attention from the first page and doesn't let you go. I read her book in a day or a few days.

I think the thing I admire most about her work is that this novel isn't an easy read but that doesn't mean it isn't readable. She pushes the boundaries of what's comfortable and what you don't talk about, because she can.

She takes characters who are so domestic and ordinary and opens them up and allows the reader to see their darkness completely unrestricted.

This was my first book by A.M. Homes and I'll be back. (But I'll probably read in the day time. It won't make me feel any safer, but I'll feel better about it.) ( )

It's was tough to get what I didn't like about this work into a single word or phrase, but eventually, after a story called The Bullet Catcher, I decided on "Passionless". And that's the way Ms. Homes writes. The narrative is so bland and uninteresting one is forced to un-suspend their disbelief. In the first story about a couple who gets a break from the kids the tone is absolutely necessary, it fits the story perfectly. But that's why it was first, after a few more stories one begins to fall asleep at the lack deftness yet anatomically correct construction of a literary story. It turns out her very style is passionless, there's no (I don't know how to say it) "punch" to her words, no "energy". AND, in most of the stories, nothing happens, which is fine if you there's an encompassing beauty about the narrative. But in these works there isn't anything to keep you reading.

Then there's this ridiculous story "The Bullet Catcher". It's a meandering tale that isn't worth summation here, but at the end the MC gets SHOT in the back. Pretty cool right? NO. Because the one who shoots him is a mall security guard. That's right a mall cop who carries a gun and shoots fleeing shoplifters. And what did the guy steal? A baseball mitt and a bat. There's is a lot wrong and implausible there. Just fucking lame. ( )

The protagonists in A.M. Homes’ stories are nearly all slightly askew. Their situations are neat and orderly — a couple’s staycation whilst their children holiday with their grandmother; sunbathing; office work; a sleepover. The locales tend to be suburban, typically middle-class and white. But in the midst of all this predictable normalcy, the characters’ interior lives are a frightening jumble of misplaced desire and irrationality. As a result, Homes can move from the mundane to the outlandish and back in a flash. The effect is striking. But to what end?

Homes’ early stories, as found in this collection, might be a response to the prominent mode of dirty realism in the ‘90s. But for her, the grittiness lies inside. Adults become self-absorbed teenagers in the absence of their children. A man with anger management issues implodes when his routine mechanism to diffuse his pent-up anger becomes temporarily unavailable. Indeed adults seem to always be at risk of disintegration. For the young teen protagonists of stories like “Chunky in Heat,” or “A Real Doll,” pubescence borders on self-harm. And the interiors of minds or linen closets (as in “Yours Truly”) just are the arenas of action.

Curious and slightly disturbing, but riveting all the same. Gently recommended. ( )