Weird and wonderful. Heavy at times, strange throughout, but uplifting to the end. An incredible read.
May We Be Forgiven won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2013, and, initially, I wasn’t sure why. Now that I’ve finished it, I understand. It’s ripe with emotion and it’s both dark and strangely uplifting.
The beginning of the book is shambolic. The protagonist’s life is entirely upended in a series of wildly chaotic occurrences which happen almost immediately, in a string of events so sudden and inextricable that it feels like witnessing a collision. Within the first 15 pages, Harry has had an affair with his brother’s wife, three people have been murdered, and his brother has been sent to a psych ward. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the book isn’t really about these events. It’s about what comes after. It’s about a man dealing with the aftermath of his life collapsing in on itself. We watch our protagonist, Harry, lose everything. We watch his life crumble around him. We watch him grapple with guilt, wondering if the fault lies with him and him alone.
“‘May we be forgiven’, an incantation, a prayer, the hope that somehow I come out of this alive. Was there ever a time you thought – I am doing this on purpose, I am fucking up and I don’t know why.”
At this point you’re likely thinking this sounds miserable. It’s not a jovial book, but it’s also not quite the disturbed and depressing book you might assume. Between the horrific events, the disintegration of Harry’s life, and his general despair, this book is dark. However, it’s not an entirely miserable read. I could never make it through 500 pages of misery. And the reviews agree with me. One on the front cover of my copy describes it as ‘nightmare-black and extremely funny’. Do I think it was funny? I’m not sure. I wasn’t exactly rolling on the floor but it’s certainly written as a far lighter book than you would expect.
“A minute after the minder is gone, I accidentally flip a massive clot of rich black dirt into my eye, blinding myself. I paw at my face, trying to clear it. I use my shirt, get up too fast, and step on the trowel, throwing myself off balance. I crash into the barbecue and rebound – mentally writing the headline: Idiot Kills Self in Garden Accident.”
This is down to Homes’ writing style. Brilliant and intriguing, it brings a lightness to the book that I don’t think you could otherwise achieve. It’s written in the first person, with our protagonist Harry narrating. Despite this, he has an emotional distance from his own life, likely the result of its absurdity, which oddly gives the book a more lighthearted feel. I’m unsure if ‘emotional distance’ is really the most apt term for what I’m attempting to describe, but I certainly felt that Harry struggled to grasp the actuality of what was happening to him. He seems to view his own life from the outside in, and I was repeatedly struck by the impression that I was watching a man so deep within the storm that he wasn’t always aware he was within it.
“Amazing, isn’t it,” she says, “how easily we slip right off the rails. Are you okay now?”
And yet, despite these struggles, there were moments of profound joy. Harry cobbles together a found family: his nephew and niece, a young boy, an elderly couple. This was what kept him sane, what made life bearable. It was only after finishing the book that I could see that these moments of happiness became more frequent as the story progressed. That was my favourite part about the book. Harry is tasked with piecing his life back together, and the lives of those around him, and it’s something that he has to really want in order for him to see it to fruition. I think there’s something to be said about how sometimes living for others has to be the initial step before living for yourself.
“The truth is, despite how stressful it all is – not to mention the uncanny sensation that the minute you start to think it’s all going well something is bound to fall apart – despite it all, I am pleased with how well the children are doing.”
Harry appears to be going for a clean sweep on making terrible life decisions but, without wanting to give away too much of the book, he becomes better. He improves the lives of others and has his life improved in return, even if neither group set out to do so. To me, Homes’ book speaks to the, sometimes hellish, unpredictably of life. One moment Harry is trying to look after his niece and nephew, the next he is derailing an arms deal he has accidentally enabled and then, not a hundred pages later, his car is being hijacked. Although surrealist, it speaks to human nature and how very strange it can be, and to the way people can both ruin each other’s life and also come together for each other.
This message of the importance of people and relationships within our lives has been done before. It’s not new. But what I haven’t read before is a book where such a message is so integral to the story that it is barely noticeable. It’s not asking you to analyse or understand throughout. It’s not didactic, presenting you with a platter of morals to take away. Instead, it tells you the raw and unfaltering account of one man’s life. There are no milestones and signposts, no noticeable changes. It’s only when you look back that you realise what a huge shift has occurred. Only then can you see just how far you’ve come, and just how much has changed.
“I note the absence of worry and the sense that in the past the absence of anxiety would have caused me to panic, but now it is something I simply notice and then let go – carrying on. I am looking down the table thinking of everyone I’ve ever known; every hello and goodbye sweeps through me like an autumn breeze.”
Granted, the situations were extreme and the characters were intense – I don’t think you’re meant to read the book and directly relate to it – but they’re thought-provoking. They’re not necessarily meant to be realistic. I don’t think A. M. Homes’ exploration of contemporary America is necessarily meant to be realistic either, but it’s interesting. It’s interesting and it’s painful, and it’s strange (potentially too strange for some, based on the reviews I’ve seen online). But I loved it. I sped through it at break-neck speed. Since finishing the book, I can now see why it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I cannot begin to fathom how it was written.
Before you read this book, please look up the trigger warnings online. It touches on lots of heavy topics, including child abuse, severe domestic violence, and death. Not all of them are described ‘on-screen’, but some are.
