Book Review: This Book Will Save Your Life

I really wanted to like this book. I liked the blurb on the back. I liked the funny description on the inside of the dust jacket. I nearly purchased it several times. The plot had so much potential. A disconnected and distracted man wakes one day to realize the silliness and discomfort of his too-comfortable life. Oh and it's set in the backdrop of an apocalyptic Los Angeles. What's not to love about emotional awakening AND an apocalypse?

It turns out there is plenty to hate in this tedious and disconnected book. Richard Novak is isolated, self-centered and wealthy. He lives in a sad little prison of his own making, claiming to need no one and nothing beyond his trainer, nutritionist and housekeeper. Then a trip to the local emergency room, paired with a series of increasingly bizarre events lead him to become a local celebrity, befriend an immigrant doughnut maker, get laid, indulge in some new age hooey, and finally heal the chasm between himself and his angry, bitter son. All while California crumbles around him.

I didn't so much read this book as slog through it like a dogged explorer searching for treasure in a swamp. Richard is utterly unlikeable. The other characters match Richard in wealth and attitude. His kid is a prick. His ex-wife a ball busting, bag of douche. Even his maid is a charmless jerk. However, the wealth of assholes in this book isn't the real issue. The real problem is AM Holmes's relentless preaching and abusive use of metaphor. Richard has a small crater in his yard that keeps getting bigger and bigger until it's a vast chasm that destroys his home and acts as a catalyst for his realization that his life is not what it should be. I am black and blue from all the beating I took upside the head with that particular metaphor.

My other problem with the book is that the main character isn't proactive. He doesn't make changes with any kind of purpose. Instead change is thrust upon him but he doesn't actually do as much with changes as the dust jacket would have you believe. The momentum of the book is not in the arc of the main character but in a series of random, bizarre things that happen when he is around.

This Book Will Save Your Life is touted as satire and if it is, it isn't good satire. It's mostly just dreary and dismal. The initial feeling of disconnection and stagnation, was a great way to start the story, but the feeling never left the book. It was so spare that all the bizarre circumstances, which I think were intended to be wacky, felt forced and desperate. The ending is bland and unsatisfying. This book isn't nearly as clever or useful as the writer believes it to be. It did not save my life, but it did waste several hours of it.