Winner of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.

Great read. I couldn't put this down. Interesting characters and black humour throughout. I laughed so much at very unexpected things. Very poignant in parts also as it makes you think about the various relationships we have. Strongly recommend.

Fantastic read. One man drifting through life before an act of violence makes him confront the way he lives his life, his relationship to his family and others. In the end tragedy makes him grow up and live his life.

Within the first 50 pages of A.M. Homes' ambitious and enthralling new novel, one man has gone mad, been institutionalized, escaped, found his brother in bed with his wife and murdered the latter with a lamp. The remaining 450 pages of "May We Be Forgiven" play with the substance of the American dream and give the reader a horrific, internet-age deconstruction. Sexual encounters, suspicions, medications and desensitized teenagers abound and a fast-paced, unwordy and direct narrative move the novel along without ever breaking stride. Each character seeks some kind of relationship: a female teacher finds comfort in an 11-year-old, two senile seniors nurse dolls as if they were children. And yet nobody really knows how to connect with others in a true manner. As the protagonist muses, “The loss of the human touch scares me.” Ultimately, the novel proves that peace exists amongst community and participation; we cannot be human without being joined to someone.

That May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes hits the ground hard and running from the opening pages will let you know quickly if you have the intestinal fortitude and heart to continue. The book launches immediately into the first and most visceral of a series of insanely horrible things that happen to a family in less than a year. The sequence of woe is so over the top at times that it seems like a macabre, Tarantinoesque cartoon of violence and perversity. Running parallel to the gutwrenching but - it must be said - often darkly hilarious mayhem, parts of May We Be Forgiven are also lyrically wonderful testaments to spirit, optimism, resilience and forging new family structures out of the ashes of old ones.

" By the author of This Book Will Save Your Life." Fiction A to Z December 2012 newsletter http://www.nextreads.com/Display2.aspx?SID=5acc8fc1-4e91-4ebe-906d-f8fc5e82a8e0&N=580458

A.M. Homes has created something astounding with May We Be Forgiven. This modern tale of redemption followed Harold Silver, a man on the outside looking in, who is forced to stop watching and start participating, when his older brother George comes unwound and becomes responsible for a series of deaths. Harold suddenly finds himself responsible for the care of George's two children, his home, his pets, and getting his own life back on track. But before he can do any of that, he must descend into the surreal, rhythms of a life that buffets him around from one unsettling experience to the next. I loved this book. It starts off with a series of shocking events, then peels back the facade of the upper middle-class to expose some pretty bizarre, and sometimes ugly behavior. Readers will be left alternately disturbed and chuckling by Homes' straight-forward writing style married to her startling circumstances. Characters frequently misunderstand each other to comic effect. But somewhere along the way, with sublime subtlety, Homes starts to turn things around, and allow George to piece his life back together. As the title may suggest, this is a powerful, and beautifully rendered story of forgiveness.