''May We Be Forgiven'' is a 2012 novel by American writer

A. M. Homes Amy M. Homes (pen name A. M. Homes; born December 18, 1961) is an American writer best known for her controversial novels and unusual short stories, which feature extreme situations and characters. Notably, her novel '' The End of Alice'' (1996) ...

. It won the 2013 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the

Orange Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...

Writing and publication

What became the first chapter of the novel was published as a short story in ''

Granta Magazine ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and m ...

'' 100th issue in 2007. It was selected by

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and ...

for ''

The Best American Short Stories 2008 ''The Best American Short Stories 2008'', a volume in ''The Best American Short Stories series'', was edited by Heidi Pitlor and by guest editor Salman Rushdie.Pitor, Heidi and Rushdie, Salman (editors), ''The Best American Short Stories 2008'' Ho ...

''. Homes went on to develop characters and plot as a novel.

Plot

The central character is Harry Silver, a professor based in New York City whose specialty is "Nixonology", the study of former US President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

. His brother George is a TV executive who ends up in a psychiatric ward after a car accident in which two people die. Harry falls into an affair with George's wife Jane while trying to comfort and assist her. After walking out of the hospital, George finds them together and kills Jane. He is committed to a mental institution for the murder. This horrific first chapter of loss sets up the rest of the novel. In the aftermath of the scandal, Harry's wife leaves him. He moves from Manhattan into George's suburban life to care for his dog, and nephew and niece, a boy and a girl who each attend elite boarding schools. Harry functions as an innocent abroad in this different world, allowing for numerous satirical encounters and observations. He goes through a kind of redemption, cobbling together a kind of family, including three generations.

Critical reaction

Garth Risk Hallberg in The ''New York Times'' found influences of authors

Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, per ...

and

John Cheever John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; ...

in Homes' earlier work and this novel, saying while "Homes’s early work traded on the dissonance between the former’s 'Kulturkritik' and the latter’s introspection, “May We Be Forgiven” fumbles toward harmony." He criticised Homes' style as too flat and minimalistic. He noted that Harry is "a figurative cousin to Jack Gladney, the “Hitler studies” scholar in DeLillo’s “White Noise”." Hallberg found the book to be overly detailed and its

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

superficial and dated. The review concluded by saying the novel was "a picaresque in which nothing much happens, a confession we can’t quite believe, a satire whose targets are already dead." ''The Guardian'' found it a "very uneven novel, rickety, meandering and repetitive", impressive in its humor but featuring "an uneasy mixture of truism (be nice to children, animals, strangers) and

kitsch Kitsch ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste. The avant-garde opposed kitsch as melodramatic and superficial affiliation with ...

(form friendships with immigrants who work at fast food outlets, listen to the wise medicine man)". It concluded, "'May We Be Forgiven' is a semi-serious, semi-effective, semi-brilliant novel which could not be called, overall, an artistic success. But you'd have to have no sense of the absurd, and no sense of humour, not to be pretty impressed." ''The Independent'' found it very entertaining, with "delicious black humour, her sharp characterisation, and – yes – that thrilling narrative intensity." Critic David Evans thought the work was too particular to stand for "state-of-the-nation" satire, as another critic had characterized it. The novel won the 2013

Women's Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...

, an annual literary award for novels by women writers published in English in the United Kingdom in the previous year.

References

{{Reflist 2012 American novels Viking Press books Women's Prize for Fiction-winning works Novels set in New York City