May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes

Theo has just read me something from the paper about Chinese students and their families blockading the exam hall where they had just done their final school exams to protest about inspectors preventing them cheating. They said that they were disadvantaged since everybody in China cheats. This could almost have come from May We Be Forgiven. It’s a crazy book full of crazy situations, all of which are scathing satires on the American way of life. Early in the book the protagonist, Harold, who is a Nixon scholar, defines the American Dream, ie the opportunity for anybody to make good, and refers to Nixon’s part in promoting it. The events in the book are about the American Dream gone nuts. Essentially, and without spoiling the story, Harold is a mild mannered, somewhat spineless and unengaged professor of Nixon studies who becomes involved with his sister in law Jane. This involvement unleashes a series of events, which are fairly credible but very strange. I found the book long and, not knowing a great deal about Nixon, a little long winded when it talked about him, but probably appropriately so if you knew the history. The descriptions of institutions such as the schools, the criminal justice system and so forth are hilarious, brilliant satire and at the same time ridiculous – I hope! This book probably verges on chick lit but I really enjoyed it. It’s well written and compelling.