The Unfolding

April 1, 2022

Angered by Barack Obama's election to the presidency, the Big Guy joins with likeminded buddies as they plan disruptions to the nation's forward momentum, seeking to hang on to their large slice of the pie. Meanwhile, his wife mourns her wasted life and his daughter realizes that her father's version of history is not hers. Investigating the meaning of truth, freedom, and democracy--and how those words signify different things to different people--Homes shows us a divided country within a divided household. From the author of the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 18, 2022
Homes follows Days of Awe with a satiric misfire about a wealthy Republican donor and his family in the wake of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. At the center is a 60-something money man called the “Big Guy” who forms a small clandestine organization with like-minded Republican men to erode American trust in Democratic Party agendas. Meanwhile, the Big Guy’s alcoholic wife, Charlotte, attempts suicide, is shipped off to the Betty Ford Center, and grows close to another resident, Terrie. The Big Guy’s 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to question her sheltered upbringing after she learns some family secrets. Throughout, Homes injects her signature wit (on the choice of Sarah Palin for John McCain’s running mate, the Big Guy says, “If you want to appeal to women voters, don’t pick an idiot”), but most of the supporting cast are caricatures, and far too often, when meeting with the Big Guy to plot their retribution, they ramble on interminably. Homes loses the balance provided by the three family members, and though she makes a stab at tying up loose ends in the final pages, it’s too little, too late. While the novel sparks when exploring the political underground, it never fully ignites. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

August 15, 2022
When you're the Big Guy, life is good. Sharp wife, devoted daughter, friends in high places, and (obvs) lots of money, he inhabits his privilege and prestige with presumption and ease. But when Obama is elected president, his comfortable perch at the top of the pecking order suddenly feels more precarious than preordained. A nation's progress is the Big Guy's existential crisis--and call to action. Set entirely during the weeks between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009, Homes' new novel chronicles the Big Guy's dual missions: to right the courses of both his country and his marriage. (One of these tasks will be easier than the other.) In the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008, stricken, enraged, and reeling from the "Hindenburg" election results, the Big Guy decides to put together an A-Team, a cabal of haves--"members of the good fortune club"--that convenes to shoot guns and go ballooning and plot a deep elite countermine to "reclaim our America." While this happy plan is coming together, the Big Guy's personal life is unraveling, and his tightly wound wife, Charlotte, is having a crisis of her own: "I forgot to have my life," she tells him. "I've been having your life for a quarter of a century." Set in relief to the jejune and tedious primary storyline, this complicated relationship is devastatingly articulated, far more nuanced and engaging. "Nine p.m. is prime time for bed, to be alone, to have themselves to themselves, to have finished the business of being a couple," Homes writes, deftly explaining their early dinner habit and so much more. Alas, the blowhards in the how-we-got-here wannabe satire prequel keep bigfooting the B side: "Someone needs to grab this country by the balls and wake it the hell up," the Big Guy tells his uninspired co-conspirators. Big words, but not nearly big enough to out-outrageous the footage, quotes, testimony, and expos�s that have dominated American life since 2015. It must be noted: The reality of how we got here has already been extensively reported elsewhere to eye-popping effect and is far more shocking than anything here. If truth is stranger than fiction, this makes a strong case that it's also a better read. Stick with the news.

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August 1, 2022
Meghan, 18, is voting for the first time. Her wealthy, white, conservative father, the Big Guy, has flown her out to their Wyoming ranch from her Virginia boarding school. With her troubled mother, Charlotte, they travel to Phoenix, hoping to celebrate with John McCain. Instead, the Big Guy is confronted with the fact that voters have trampled on his most cherished beliefs and elected a Black president. The Big Guy declares, "It's an official apocalypse. We're going to have to do something." That ominous "something" involves the convening of a covert group of rich influential white men willing to do damn near anything to retake power for their endangered breed. With her imitable command of fast-breaking dialogue, pinpoint description, caustic wit, keen psychological perception, and wise attunement to the zeitgeist, Homes channels the reckless rage fueling the right-wing backlash now threatening the very foundation of our democracy. As the Big Guy schemes with his cartoonish fellow disruptors, Charlotte succumbs to long-suppressed anger and grief, and Meghan discovers her power. Homes' incisive satire is galvanizing in its insights, sharply hilarious, and thoughtfully, even hopefully compassionate.

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