A. M. Homes

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A. M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in a stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny. The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject — history — is not exactly what her father taught her. In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in power, Homes unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy — and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the same words mean such different things to people living together under one roof. From the writer who is always “razor sharp and furiously good” (Zadie Smith), The Unfolding (Viking) is a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country.

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