There’s something almost Grecian about the set of calamities ... No Way Home could easily have settled into a worn remake of Fatal Attraction — just boil the dog instead of the rabbit — Boyle has something more surprising in store ... I love the pulpy way this novel keeps ratcheting up the violence, the cringe-inducing humiliations, the face-planting missteps! And, of course, it all pours down on us in the great avalanche of Boyle’s prose that can feel chaotic in the moment until it delivers us masterfully to some breathtaking catastrophe of primal, self-justifying rage.
Boyle is trying — if not entirely succeeding — at doing something trickier in this novel. The hats aren’t strictly black or white, the femme not as fatale as she seems, intentions and emotions vaguer and harder to tease out than in a more straightforward thriller ... Setting the plot in motion requires Boyle to abandon his great gift of satire and humor for the sake of structure. What’s left are some ironic passages about how the world pretends it can fix us — give us a home, a job, the joys of a relationship, healthcare when we need it — but always lets us down.
No Way Home follows a triangular narrative in which Bethany finds herself caught between Jesse, her ex, and Terry, her new beau ... This structural strategy succeeds because Boyle has the stylistic chops needed to capture the affective dynamics of this largely dysfunctional social world ... Engages with the Anthropocene by living up to the promise of its title and taking seriously the problem of human habitation ... Home in this novel has as much to do with the human capacity to find a place ... There’s no way home because there’s usually the possibility of a new one.
