I might come back to this novel and re-read it, actually. I say this because I think it is one of *those* novels that I - or you, the universal 'you' - might return to a few times because it's so rich and I'm sure I've missed several tricks. It is fiction, yes, but it's about the effect of politics on people, and the effect on the most important relationships we have. Specifically, the election of Barack Obama and the way in which Republicans, represented as quite deliberately revolting rich white men, are so incredibly upset. The story revolves around a father and daughter, corruption, and it tickles the edges of the sociological affective.

Holmes' narrative style is usually compelling, and this novel is no exception, but I did find myself drifting off out of the plot very occasionally and I think that's to do with the slight issue I had with the representation of the daughter. I don't know... there was something not quite right there about her reaction to some of the events. As I say, I'll read it again, for sure.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

What would you do if you were working for 10 years on a novel & events overtook you? Add to this that your last book won the @womensprize & realistically you’re in a tough spot.

This is Holmes’ much anticipated novel published in UK 8 Sept 2022. Thematically it’s similar to her prize winning May We Be Forgiven. In both Holmes presents us with macro & micro stories.

The macro story is set amongst Republicans as Obama is elected. These old white men supporters are reeling & cannot believe an “African” has been elected to the office of leader of the free World.

Central to both stories is Mr Big.

The micro story is his falling apart family. His alcoholic wife needs to be checked into the Betty Ford Clinic & his daughter is increasingly finding her own path & beliefs.

In the wake of Barack Hussein Obama’s election as the US’ 44th President Mr Big starts assembling a Republican high command of donors, lobbyists, businessmen, scientists, military men. This crazed influential clique are going to make America great again. They are angry & searching for America’s true North.

What Holmes does is create an outer & an inner World. In the Outer World everyone who doesn’t look like Mr Big & his cronies are the enemy. Farcically those in his inner circle hold dissimilar lifestyles but they know love & respect them so they are included.

At its best this novel is smart. The dialogue so well crafted. Holmes makes us sympathise with “family” Mr Big which makes his subversive self all the more alarming. The contrast and tension between the macro and micro is chock-full of black comedy.

However, the issue Holmes has is that real life events have overtaken her. American Republican politics has become crazier than she imagines. The radical have broken cover & instead of holding clandestine meetings as in this novel, they do so out in the open at rallies & by storming the US Capitol.

However, this is an excellent novel that will disturb you in the way Holmes intended. She is a writer’s writer & her original prose will carry you through to make you ponder a chilling future. One for the prize lists. I hope you read it.

Although I usually stay away from politics I loved this book! I enjoyed the dysfunctional family and family secrets being revealed parts of The Unfolding by A.M Homes more than the political parts. Overall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This novel opens on 5 November 2008 which was the day after the 2008 US presidential election won by Barack Obama against John McCain. We follow the Hitchens family. The father is known simply as the Big Guy. His wife is Charlotte and their only child is the eighteen year old Meghan. The Big Guy is rich, very rich, and, of course, a Republican voter, as are his wife and daughter. He is also a friend of McCain.

We move back to election day, 4 November. Meghan is at a posh boarding school in Virginia and comes home (Wyoming, though they appear to have several homes) to vote, the first time she has voted. Much is made of this first vote by her family and Meghan herself, as though it were some major initiation rite.

Immediately after voting the three fly to Phoenix to stay at The Biltmore Hotel, where McCain and his family are staying and where there will be a big party (which, of course, turns into a wake).

One thing Meghan seems to do is to meet complete strangers and get on with them. Here she meets a social historian, Mark Eisner, twenty-five years her senior and they end up swimming together, late at night, in the hotel pool. She will later chat away to the person sitting next to her on the flight back to Virginia and the taxi driver. Her conversation with her family and people she knows seem more awkward than her conversation with these strangers.

Not surprisingly, after Obama’s victory, there is considerable despondency among the Republicans. A Black man just got elected president of the United States. Oh my fucking god. They blame the choice of Sarah Palin as running mate (Whoever suggested that Palin woman to him should be court-martialled. If you want to appeal to women voters, don’t pick an idiot.) Hitchens Sr’s reaction is “I can’t spend the next thirty years watching it all come undone.

Meghan goes back to school and her parents go to one of their houses (the one in Palm Beach). He blames himself – I spent all my time trying to get rich but didn’t do something more interesting with my life, something that might change the course of the world. She, as usual, turns to drink and bemoans her own fate. I forgot to have my life. I’ve been having your life for a quarter of a century. The last time I had my own life I was about eleven.

Back in Virginia, Meghan has something of a traumatic experience involving a horse, a deer and a police officer. Both she and her father (though for different reasons) say that they cannot go back to things the way they were. None of this can continue.

The Big Guy decides he is going to arrange a counter-attack. He packs his wife off to the Betty Ford Center. She is an alcoholic and depressive. He invites a few (very few) trusted friends to the house, including, surprisingly, Mark Eisner whom he met at the Biltmore but does not know that Eisner and Meghan met. Indeed he seems to trust him on one brief meeting and the fact that Eisner’s father was a speech-writer for Eisenhower.

The men (all men, of course) discuss what went wrong and what they can do about it. From our perspective, reading this after the Trump presidency, it takes an interesting turn. Obviously Trump does not get mentioned, not least because if anyone had suggested back in 2008 that Trump, a dodgy businessman and second-rate TV star, would succeed Obama, they would have been considered insane. They mention and criticise the far right in the Republican Party(I can tell you right now, there’s a set of fresh-faced yahoos out there who call themselves Republicans but they’re not like Republicans I know), though the Tea Party had not really you got going. What becomes apparent, apart from an oblique reference to socialism,is that their real concern is that Obama is black (though, of course, he is half-white). In other words racism is their main motive. A black person is obviously not one of us.

One of them sees one advantage of the far right in that they can be cover for less extreme activities. However bottom line is, we’ve lost control of the Republican Party and it’s not just our ability to steer the course of the country; the party itself is about to blow into a thousand little pieces.

There is a lot of interesting discussion, e.g. in America democracy is capitalism, guns, and lower taxes. However, it is clear they have little idea of what they can do and what they want to do except the usual vague idea of conservatives that it was somehow much better in the past and they wish to bring back this idealised past, which of course, never really existed.

They discuss various threats – cyber attacks, Russia, China, the religious right, the size of the government. However they are all unsure of what they should do, what would be treason, and what it would look like if they succeeded.

After this first meeting, there is more plotting afoot as various other potential supporters are roped in. They visit strange people, including a survivalist and a weird sweet maker. They worry that, interestingly, enough, none of them has a son to take over the mantle or to whom they can leave their legacy, both financial and/or historical. They also struggle with their format. Should there be a leader? A real person is suggested.

Daughters do not count and clearly the issues of feminism as well as racism are to the fore. Meghan witnesses both and is unsure of where she is going given that she has always followed her father’s lead, virtually without question as, indeed, has her mother. The Big Guy (it seems almost cartoonish to keep calling him that but, while we know his surname, we never learn his first name) is somewhat lost when his wife is in the clinic and he is not allowed to speak to her even on the phone.

Indeed, much of the second part of the book moves away from the political to the personal. While the Big Guy’s political world is collapsing, so is his personal one, at least as regards his wife and daughter, with his relationship with both subject to considerable stress because of his actions, past and present. Part of it is clearly male bad behaviour and women being taken for granted by men. Indeed, he finally, to some degree, admits it – Not only was I not seeing them for who they are, I was actively denying them their own story. It was all about me, my need to protect myself. What an ass I am. I wonder if such a man would have said that in a book written by a man.

However his merry band of plotters move on, determined to counteract Obama. One realistically points out Our economy will divide into those who have more and those who have nothing. On the world stage, the view of America will be cloudy. Our allies will be looking for that shining city on the hill, and they will see ravages of wildfires, catastrophic floods, illness, and death. The book ends on Inauguration Day.

This book is something of an interesting mixture of the political and personal. Homes clearly wrote this book with full knowledge of Trump and his weird supporters- QAnon, Proud Boys, Oath-Takers and so on, though they do not get a mention, not least because they were not a feature during the period of this book. However we do know that the Koch Brothers have been responsible for a lurch to the right by the rich and, presumably, Homes had them in mind when writing this book, though there are no brothers in this book. I assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that the main characters are entirely fictitious but they may well be based on people like the Kochs.

Homes has mixed it up with the introduction of the Big Guy’s marital woes and how his wife and daughter seek their own path and freedom. The Big Guy is not the only one of the group having marital problems but he is the one we follow and learn about. The wife/daughter issue worked well. I felt that, as regards the political side, there was a lot of talking but, at least initially, little sense of what needed to be done and could be done. Moreover, the issue seemed to be primarily racist (colour and middle name) and the various policies Obama may have been planning to introduce were barely touched upon. When a military man was introduced things did start moving. I can only say that I would have loved to learn of their reaction to Trump and his allies. I suspect that they would not have been very happy.

I absolutely loved this book. As a British reader I didn’t always understand the political references but I knew enough for me to imagine that Big Guy was Donald Trump trying with his cronies to bring power back to the ‘white man ‘ after the election of Barack Obama. The novel kept me interested as the back stories of Charlotte, Meghan and to some extent Tony were revealed. Five stars

Is this political satire? I think so, with the surreal twists that sets AM Homes apart. A glimpse of a not-so-thinly-veiled Trump's America, what it was and could be in the future. Alongside this are family dynamics of the main character The Big Guy and despite the obvious horror with which Homes views the politics of the Big Guy and his friends she succeeds in making them more than cipher characters.

I've deducted a star because at times it felt like heavy going, but nonetheless a powerful and thought provoking book.

Ever wonder how we got from the hope and change of President Obama’s election in November of 2008 to an attempted insurrection involving white supremacist groups in January of 2021? Answers to that question range from “It’s all Trump” to “Newt Gingritch kicked all this off back in 1984”, but there isn’t really an agreed-upon throughline.

That lack of consensus leaves a gap into which The Unfolding inserts itself, ready to prove just how entertaining (and horrifying) imagining “what if” could be.

What if a ridiculously wealthy white guy (known to all as the Big Guy, and not who you might assume, he's far too self-aware) got so freaked out by there being a Black president that he created a cabal with the singular aim of preserving the power of old white dudes? What if that involves selling America on a version of itself that many would find repulsive? A divided, fearful country, manipulated by social media and disinformation (one then a nascent technology, the other a cold war staple). What if he and his fellow travellers had money and connections? What if these men were more afraid of hope and change than of committing probable treason?

And what if, at the same time, the Big Guy’s marriage is crumbling? What if his wife can’t drink away her secrets and her boredom anymore? What if his teenage daughter is beginning to realise that the world doesn’t work the way he told her it did? What if he wakes up one day and wonders if he’s been the asshole all along?

Imagine all of this happening between November 4, 2008 and January 20, 2009 - in those slow weeks between the election, the holidays, and Inauguration day. Toss in sublime references to history, weaponry, and big data, some wonderful dollops of surreality (you know it’s an A.M. Homes novel, right?), and dialogue that’ll make you laugh out loud even as your blood pressure rises, and you’re in for a heck of a good time.

It’s been a decade since May We Be Forgiven, and four years since Days of Awe, but The Unfolding is worth the wait for anyone who enjoys reading A.M. Homes. It’s also a must-read for anyone who likes their humor dark and loves political satire.

(Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC - it didn't influence my review, I've already got a hardcover copy on pre-order.)

Fascinating and timely and a little disconcerting. It feels absolutely too close to the bone as it approaches the end - and viewing from ‘the other side’ it’s a kind of political thriller from the dark (white) side of America

Great author love her books. Unfortunately this is a DNF from me. It's a lot more political than I expected and I just couldn't get into the plot because of this
Book was well written and I might try reading again in the future

A novel which in typical A. M. Homes style is simple but complex.
It is not immediately clear where she is going with this novel, there are elements of political drama, family tragedy, pathos, fear inspiring, comedy and future vision.

Read it as you like, read it as tongue-in-cheek, read it as a prediction of the future or as a warning of what might happen, or already be happening.
Overall an excellent read, and for me there were lots of American political ideas that I had never thought of.

Well done to the author and publisher.
My thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy for honest review.

After Barack Obama wins the presidential election, a group of powerful and well-connected Republicans, led by the Big Guy, plot to save their vision of American democracy and to restore their own power. Meanwhile, the Big Guy’s marriage is crumbling as his wife seeks her own lost identity, and his eighteen year old daughter Meghan learns to question everything she thought she knew as a long-held family secret comes to light. Homes is a clever, satirical writer who dissects dysfunctional families brilliantly. I enjoyed the sections on this family, who are wealthy and privileged but unhappy, but as a Brit found the US politics confusing and not particularly engaging. As usual, she nails her characters with brutal precision, but I found more to admire than to love.

One thing: one of the main characters here is referred to only as "the Big Guy" throughout. This took a bit of getting used to, but somehow I managed it. It is well worth doing so, if you can, because at the end of the day, this is another fine novel from one of the best American authors.
It's November 2008 and Barack Obama has just soundly beaten Senator John McCain in the race to the White House. The Big Guy is very unhappy about this. He is a rich, ageing conservative and soon begins consulting some of his friends who have similar inclinations as to the best possible response to these events. But what exactly do they intend to do?
As others have noticed, this is definitely quite a political book. Homes' last novel went on about Richard Nixon a lot and this one features cameo appearances from the defeated McCain as well as from presidents Bush and Obama. I enjoyed the political side of the book, but rest assured, there's lots of other good stuff here too as the Big Guy finds time to reassess his relationships with Charlotte, his troubled, alcoholic wife and with their intelligent, thoughtful daughter, Megan.

Part-speculative fiction (but close to reality), part-satire, part-horror show, this book, written by a previous winner of the @womensprize, is destined to be a bestseller and talked about everywhere. It’s not out until September but it’s one to watch out for.

It’s November 2008 and Barack Obama has just been elected President of the United States. The Big Guy, a super-rich, white Republican donor is incandescent at the result and, perceiving the evaporation of traditional American values (read: white supremacy) and his own impending irrelevance, puts together a motley crew of old, rich, white men to formulate a plan to get American “back on track”.

Meanwhile, the fabric of the Big Guy’s family life is coming apart at the seams. His wife Charlotte is drinking too much and appears to have mental health problems, and his painfully spoilt, precocious daughter Meghan has some school troubles of her own, with worse to come.

This is a literary pageturner, packed with dialogue, alternately comical and infuriating. There are some very powerful, cinematic scenes in the book, and the sense of foreboding is inescapable; the closing scene is quite stunning in the sense that you feel it holds a mirror up to the last fourteen years.

It’s really quite brilliant, and awfully worrying for anyone who is familiar with the Koch brothers and/or who has followed the trail of disinformation and the assault on democracy in the last two decades.

A little too close to reality for comfort: not bloody speculative enough some might say! Highly recommend if you enjoy political and speculative fiction. Chilling. 4-4.5/5 ⭐️

The Unfolding will be published on 8 September 2022 by @grantabooks. I was delighted to read an advance digital copy of the book courtesy of the publishers via @netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.*

Music for Torching by A.M. Homes is one of my all my time favourite books so I thought I would enjoy this also. But I am so sorry. I tried for three nights in a row to get into this but could not get past 5%. I found it confusing and that frustrated me. I am also, it must be said, not a big fan of books that deal with politics (I only tried this because I love the author’s other work). All in all then, this wasn’t for me. Giving it 3 stars because I simply did not get through it but assume, because of the calibre of the author’s other work, that it is not deserving of anything less than 3 out of 5 stars.

What happens when you wake up one day and realise you’re an asshole? This is the horrifying realisation that our protagonist Big Guy comes to towards the end of the novel and his awakening to this and his battle to understand this about himself happens over a mere 2.5 months.
I love A.M Homes’ work so it’s unsurprising that I adored this one. Her ability to put the iron fist of truth about modern society in a velvet glove of beautiful, lyrical prose is something few contemporary authors can match and this book is no exception.
Set between the day of John McCain’s November 2008 defeat in the polls to Barack Obama and Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 we follow the interestingly named Big Guy a Republican lobbyist and donor as he attempts to make sense of the changing situation political landscape and his own shock at what so many others saw coming from a mile away. I have so many theories as to why Homes chose not to give us Big Guy’s name; mostly for me I think it is to do with how BG (abbreviation for ease of use from now on) likes to see himself and be seen. He is a big guy in the party, best friends with someone who works In the presidential office and has the ear of The President, someone with an invite to every party in not just one town, but any town he happens to be in and the patriarch of family that includes a beautiful if alcoholic wife and a beautiful 18 year old daughter. He has it made, he’s a success and he is on the right side of political history which is a subject dear to his heart. I also think that by not giving BG a name Homes has allowed the people usually of secondary importance in his opinion; his wife, daughter, best friend to come to the fore. They are living breathing people with back stories, hopes and dreams, quirks and flaws while he is the ubiquitous good guy, the middle aged white man on whom the USA was founded.
As BG begins to understand his blindness to the changing political landscape and his role in it he decides to set up a task force if you will, of other middle aged white men and with terrifying accuracy on the author’s part he sets out a road map for the comeback of the Republican Party. Use of data harvesting, algorithms, creating your own news media separate from the mainstream, convincing the populous to create civil disobedience which furthers your cause but that you can deny having any links to or hand in is laid out bare in a ‘how Trump got elected’ and ‘there are more terrifying things to come’ horror show.
And yet Homes doesn’t turn these Republican men into what we in the UK call ‘pantomime baddies’ they are an engaging bunch, so different and quirky (allowing Homes’ trademark humour to shine) and all genuinely convinced of their way being the right one. If you met them in a public non political setting you’d enjoy spending time with one or more of them. I’m fairly sure that half of them would have been horrified by the appointment of Trump and the other half gleeful so they are not cliche cookie cutter characters.
On characters; oh boy does Ms Homes know how to create them. I fell more and more in love with Meaghan the more she matured and grew and the more her life began to come unmoored by her parents revelations and Charlotte her brittle fragile mother who BG genuinely adores is an absolute gem after rehab and I only wish there was more room in the book for more of her towards the end.
Truly lovely pieces of connection like Big Guy and Meaghan trading George Washington facts keep this from being a dry political novel. BGs dawning realisation that his wife, daughter and best friend have their own ways of looking at their lives together and that they aren’t just satellites of his own life and interests is poignant, as his realisation that the American Dream being made by white men from the right colleges is simply not the way the world can continue to be and that his age and the age of those around him in the party had both privations and blessings that modern day Americans don’t.
It would have been so easy for BG to have a road to Damascus conversion, the Hollywood ending but this is A.M Homes and she keeps it perfectly real right up to the fantastic final paragraph that had me hooting with delight at 2:30am.

Opening the day of the 2008 America presidential election, A. M. Homes’ The Unfolding ends on Obama’s first inauguration day when a shadowy association is confirmed, bent on overthrowing the new order.

It’s been a big election for the Big Guy whose daughter, Meghan, cast her vote for the first time but things haven’t gone his way. Republican to the core, he sets about making plans to restore his vision of America, assembling a circle of supporters. Things aren't all plain sailing: he's unsettled by his best friend continuing to work for the White House and when his wife’s drinking can no longer be called social, he admits her to rehab. On inauguration day, the conspirators meet for a celebration meal while Meghan attends the ceremony with her godfather. By then a bombshell has been dropped that has entirely changed Meghan’s view of herself and her family.

Sharply observed, Homes’ novel is also very funny, making you wince through the laughter in the way that successful satire does. It would have been easy to turn the Big Guy into a cartoon Trumpian figure but Homes resists that. He’s a rich, spoiled, supremely egotistical white man, not consciously cruel or entirely unreasonable or stupid, drawing increasingly odd, downright deranged and violent people into his inner circle. I found it riveting but, probably a statement of the obvious, it’s a deeply political novel and so may not appeal to everyone.

I’d describe this book as realistic fiction. The author has done an amazing job at creating imaginary characters and situations that depict the world and society. The characters focus on themes of growing, self-discovery and confronting personal and social problems. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

A. M. Holmes' latest novel could easily be read as biography. So much does the Big Man at the heart of this novel resemble Donald Trump that it is hard not to try and draw parallels with that real life and this fiction.

But it is fiction. In summary, rich white men upset at the election of Barack Obama try and find a way to put their country back on its Republican path. The Big Man and his family feature at the heart of this novel which is Big on political thought and actions. It is anchored though by the story of a father and daughter, the way power corrupts and can shade even the truth of relationships. There are a number of great setpieces in this novel but the final one in a diner near the end really packed a punch for me. You'll know it when you get there.

As ever I found Holmes' prose immediate, dialogue rich, and quite often propulsive. I very much enjoyed my time in this world, even if I found Big Man and his associates repulsive. Repulsive but all top real. Top stuff.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

I enjoyed the dysfunctional family and family secrets being revealed parts of The Unfolding by A.M Homes more than the political parts.