May We Be Forgiven
A.M. Homes

May we be forgiven is one of those books that I have seen on the shelves and twitter posts and never read but thought I should to see what the fuss is about. It won the Women's Fiction prize, so it must be good. As it happens for the SYP February bookclub this book was voted in as the read.
I don't want to say that I hated it, as hate seems like such a strong word, but this book was definitely not for me, in any way.

It is one of those books that when someone asks what it is about, it is really hard to describe... 'so there's this guy who's brother gets in a car accident and kills a family, then comes home to find the guy (his brother) in bed with the brother's wife and so he kills her over the head with a lamp...' so that sums up the first, say, 20 pages and the premise to the story, it then goes on to describe a life of fostering the children, internet sex dates, lesbian relationships with teachers and stranger's abandoned parents.
Yeah. It felt abit like that when I was reading it. With every new escapade I was thinking 'what is going on here? What is going to happen next?'

I think there are a few fundamentals that really jarred me with this book:
1. I didn't get on with the writing style at all. Some people love the style of Austen or Dicken's works, some hate it. Not everyone can get on with them. It's like that, but this is the polar opposite of Austen/Dickens. I found the style very crude, it spent far too long describing the dirty condom left in the bin after sleeping with Jane (the brother's wife before she was killed) and an episode where a tampon was put in the wrong place (don't ask) and subsequently the girl pooed on the floor (really). Some at my book club thought this style to be gripping and realistic, but maybe I'm old-fashioned (and ignorant enough to want to live in a fairy tale land of books where harsh realities are glossed over), but I just found it crude and unenjoyable. In fact I found it very masculine as well, not just because it was told from a male character's point of view, but because of the crude nature of it, yet I discovered about half way through that A.M. Homes is actually a woman!

2. What some found as 'darkly humorous' and 'intensely gripping' I found to be pretty ridiculous (see back to list of plot points). It was argued at the book club that it was describing the realities of nature but I found nothing realistic about a mysterious girl leaving her senile parents on Harry's doorstep with all the legal forms handing over all power of attorney to him without him knowing, and then just leaving him to get on with it so she can go live her life. or when the murderous brother is dropped into a wilderness camp with other convicts and his brother seemlessly sends him a fulled data-loaded ipad of which his Israeli terrorist-looking friend starts to order guns and bombs off of it and it takes the authorities a while to bat an eyelid. When would that ever happen??
I got that it was trying to satirize society in parts and how harsh it can be, and it was quite amusing in parts but I just found it emotionally detached and plain ridiculous. I wanted more from it, more emotion over the grief of the wife and less focus instead on the dirty condom left in the bin.

I think the happy ever after almost swayed me at the end. I contemplated giving it 3 stars instead of 2 (until I was reminded how much i disliked the first 90%), it seemed to wind down at the end towards this happy ending of redemption and the functioning dysfunctional family, which was sweet, but could've happened without all the rest.

Although I may not understand why, I'm glad others liked it, it makes for a good debate at book clubs, but it is not the kind of book I would suggest anyone read if there was a choice.