Product Description

The Safety of Objects, A.M Homes' first collection of short stories, is as hilarious, perverse and extraordinary as all of Homes' books. In one of the stories, a girl's blonde Barbie doll seduces her teenaged brother in an intense episode of erotic obsession; in others a couple go off the rails and smoke crack while their children are staying with their Grandmother; and a lawyer seeks revenge on his boss by urinating into his potted plant every evening. The stories are both bizarre and believable, very funny but also frightening and sad.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39725 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 178 pages

The Guardian
‘Homes couldn’t be more deliciously named: she kicks over the doll’s house and gives suburbanity a good shake’

Leeds Guide
‘One of the best writers of her generation…absolutely in control of her subject. Simply surreal, funny and utterly original’

Sunday Herald
‘Homes opens a window on a world where our neuroses rot in full view’

Customer Reviews

Peculiar People
In a series of skillfully constructed short stories, A. M. Homes has unveiled with great élan the frightening underside of suburbia. The characters run the gamut from a disappointed pedophile to a lascivious obese girl, from a responsible mother gone wild on a weekend away from her children to a teen boy who becomes strangely attracted to his sister's Barbie. However, revealing any more about these stories would be unseemly, as the degenerate twists are part of their seductive powers.

Despite the shocking premises, the basic situations and feelings evoked are often universal - making this book a somewhat uneasy read. The reader does not want to identify with these characters, but Homes, with laser-like precision, forces the reader to just such apperception. Reading "Safety of Objects" left me alternately paralyzed with laughter and oddly nauseous - a true mark of genius! This book is the first I've read by Homes, but I'm already eagerly anticipating the next.

Stunning, Unforgettable Stories
A.M. Homes reaches in and finds deep subjects, drags them out by their heels kicking and screaming, and then exposes them further. The first story, about a couple whose kids are away for a week and so the parents find themselves experimenting with drugs, is one of the most remarkably human stories I've ever read. As you bob and weave through the stories you run across characters whose lives make your toes curl.

And wait until you get to the last story, the one about the doll.

Talk about a story that will stay with you forever.

Bizarrely disturbing but riveting
I am not a great lover of short stories to be honest excepting early Ray Bradbury in my formative years but it's been a while since I read a book which is so discomfitting and accurate in its portrayal of characters and their nuances. Because, the stories are very short, it's not a book that you can read in a oner but one to be savoured for each novella and all it encompasses. All but one of the stories are superb in their execution (I just couldn't see the point of 'The Bullet Stopper') and while some of the events played out make for strange fodder, the book as a whole is easily digestible. Excellent.