MixedThe Chicago Review of Books... my frustration with The Unfolding has everything to do with simply, desperately, craving a break from the tantrums and revenge ploys of old white men—a reprieve Homes denied me. The book, which imagines an underground band of bros coming together in the wake of Obama’s 2008 win to plot a rich, white reclamation of power, has been called prescient. But it doesn’t feel prescient. Billed as satire, The Unfolding doesn’t feel satirical. What it feels like is a mirror. Cracked and ugly and magnifying the dire state of our country ... Funny, sure. But it all felt too close and too soon ... The book is a study of white privilege, a reminder not only of the insidious power structure undermining our democracy, but at its very origin and root. The problem is, these bros, who consider aprons \'feminizing,\' are cast largely as bumbling buffoons, when in reality, they are lethal ... To be fair, so is Homes’ humor ... Yet I couldn’t help but feel that Homes, who built her career around risk, played it safe by merely holding up that mirror. These blowhards, they talk and they talk. For pages and pages ... with all the stories out there vying for our attention, it’s tough to muster the bandwidth to invest in this ridiculously cushy family’s plights, no matter how sharply parodied ... One of Homes’ theses is that the same rhetoric uttered through different ideological mouthpieces can have diametrically opposite effects. It’s an incisive point deftly woven, but, rhetoric is rhetoric, which can be…fatiguing. Where was her signature subversion? I hungered for schadenfreude, poetic justice, for the Forever Men to go down in some explosive cook den of fire. I should know better: Homes is not here for your morality ... Homes never falters on the level of craft. She is a master of scene and dialogue at cross purposes. The novel brims with razor sharp prose and zings with her sensibility ... Which is why I’ll always devour Homes with ravenous, reckless excitement. That voice, yes.. And this: She’s not afraid to show seams. This is what it means to be a human writer capturing a hopelessly flawed humanity. If you’re not in the mood, well, tough noogies ... This is an indictment. We’re in deep, deep shit. Which is her whole point: There’s no escaping it.
