Things You Should Know: A Collection of Stories

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.

Publishers Weekly

Homess first collection since 1990s much-praised The Safety of Objects offers 11 sharply original portraits of domestic life: the distance between family members, the minor wars between friends and lovers. Written over the last decade, with several stories previously published in glossies and literary magazines, this volume confirms Homess reputation as an expert stylist and unique chronicler of suburban drama. Conception takes a strange turn in Georgica, as a woman recovering from an accident fixates on the golden boys of the beach and plots to make one of them the father of her child. The narrator of The Chinese Lesson finds his sympathy for his confused, homesick mother-in-law, Mrs. Ha, has alienated him from his wife, who has spent her life trying not to be Chinese. In the title piece, a fourth-grade teachers list of things you already should know but maybe are a little dumb, so you dont becomes an obsession for the narrator, who missed school the day it was supposedly handed out. A shape-shifting woman who visits the insouciant, anorexic girl of Raft in Water, Floating finds her own story in The Weather Outside Is Sunny and Bright. Not much happens in it"she goes to her job (architectural forensics ), visits her mother in a nursing home, takes a bath and casually exercises her powers"but the story feels full anyway, replete with a strange magic. Its precisely this sort of thing that makes Homes so good. (Sept. 6) Forecast: Homess reputation alone should guarantee strong sales. The planned July release of the film version of The Safety of Objects, starring Glenn Close and Dermot Mulroney, would have helped, but the release date has been pushed to spring 2003. Eight-city author tour. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Salon wrote of the characters in A. M. Homes s 2002 story collection Things You Should Know, There are few formalities, even less bulls--t, no making nice for the sake of appearances. The same could be said for Homes s work as a whole. She specializes in bringing dark impulses and twisted tendencies to the surface, never softening or downplaying the often disturbing behavior displayed by her characters.