"The Revelation": AM Homes' new novel exposes America's mega-rich.

The Big Fish is the main character in The Revelation , the last novel by A.M. Homes (Washington DC, 1961), a sort of political fable with hints of thriller and intimate family drama with which the writer returned to fiction a few years ago after a 10-year wait. Known for titles such as In a Country of Mothers – a comedy of “bad manners” that narrates the unhealthy relationship between a psychoanalyst and a young patient who is a filmmaker –, Alice's End – which sparked controversy for its pedophile narrator whom critics defined as “a cross between Humbert Humbert and Hannibal Lecter”), Music for Burning Hearts – which begins when a bored couple in crisis decide to set fire to their house – and short story collections such as Things You Should Know , which, in the tradition of John Cheever and Dorothy Parker, linked Homes to the Southern and modern Gothic of authors such as Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers.

Called the "queen of bad-girl heroines" and "the best portraitist of contemporary depravity," 63-year-old Amy Michael Homes returns with a dose of her best medicine: a family on the verge of exploding in a new version: that of exploring a group of mega-millionaires in their mansions, a kind of armed wing of the Republican Party that believes it has the right to control the country and thus define its culture. And she doesn't have time to waste in a country that considers itself the center of the world, a symbol of Western democracy.

In Revelation , the grande dame of American suburbia and the charmingly dysfunctional family focuses on everyday characters, albeit slightly exaggerated and cartoonish, interweaving real events with absolute imagination, à la Don DeLillo. What we initially encounter is a sense of disbelief.

It was impossible for Obama to win for those men who buy influence and are willing to do everything possible to avoid depriving themselves of all kinds of access to civil society, now seemingly denied by this unexpected "anomaly" of Black and "socialist" people in power. These men are even capable of setting fire to the Capitol and are self-proclaimed to kill in order to maintain their privileges, and who think of the country as if it were a work under an ongoing script, a kind of writers, creatives, or architects who control the foundations of their buildings, while simultaneously concerned that their children and future generations continue that legacy.

What, in short, is a big shot? Tim Burton had already addressed this in his iconic film, Big Shot , where he also delved into paternal relationships and family fabrications. “I'm rich and I'm proud of it. Ordinary people should be delighted to see me and be very happy when I buy their products and eat in their restaurants; it's a sign of approval,” says Big Shot, almost a replica of Donald Trump and his friends .

For him and a group of individuals, the nation is under threat . They then organize a supreme mission convened by the Big Shot, a shadowy plot with individuals who present themselves as patriots, "pillars of industry, millionaires, industrialists, magnates, entrepreneurs."

Successful men with secure and honorable homes who cannot afford to be lukewarm , because “we have worked like dogs, we have created empires or whatever comes after empires.”

Nostalgic for a past they must recover, they resort to strategies like disinformation, causing chaos to "return to our core values," as another member of the group puts it. National security, homeland, family, and order are the far-right's playbook: they envision actions like asking people to stay home and banning group gatherings, restoring "faith" and the call to arms.

As the elite conspiracy is being hatched, young Megan, the only daughter of Big Shot, preparing for college, begins to question the world she lives in when she casts her first vote. The atmosphere is exciting: America is very much about America.

But things can get out of hand, and it turns out not everyone is as good as they think they are . Meanwhile, Charlotte, his wife, limited by circumstances and in the shadow of her husband, gives signs of a stampede that causes the family to implode, a kind of wild entity that seems capable of destroying everything, exhausted by the pressures and commands.

Homes masters irony and fluid dialogue construction in an interior drama of conspiratorial suspense , with explicit echoes of contemporary American politics, set in the White House—where Tony, one of the characters, works as a special advisor to the president. There are milestones such as September 2, 1945, the day Japan signed its surrender, ending World War II, “the war ends and the American dream flourishes with my name written on it.”

People married to their jobs, ultra-available, working two devices at once—“Tony is a very busy man. He doesn’t have time to be lonely. He’s what we call a confirmed bachelor,” his mother says of him— people who never stop projecting their own lives onto that of their country , in a parallel montage that spreads across the world with an aura of grandeur and superiority.

And in the corners, under the carpet, closet homosexuals and Black people appear among the family members: contradictions and fissures that cannot prevent the collapse of small intimacies. Intelligent, alcoholic women dress up for cocktails and big events, while being sidelined by the low-level machismo on the periphery of their prominent men.

Democracy as a roller coaster : rising fifty meters and falling at 150 kilometers per hour. A plan that seems grotesque and absurd in a highly competitive world, with political speeches being wrung out while mega-millionaires seem concerned that their funds are being managed in tax havens.

There are many Americas, many bubbles within the United States . Customs that never die, like the Thanksgiving turkey, and a succession of scenes where the narrator lends versatility to the story, with descriptive skills, such as when she describes what it means, for distinguished people, to travel with a chauffeur in high-end cars.

The culture of consumption and exhibition, between the public and the private, is another sign of the novel, in all its splendor.

Several revelations unfold: that of the country in its present and immediate future; that of cultural battles and conflicting narratives; and that of Big Shot and his family, including the transformation of his daughter, divorced from the destiny her father imagines. Megan, the skeptical daughter, realizes that history contains many kinds of stories.

In The Revelation, the inside and the outside intersect, redefining each other in a world in turmoil. Economics and fiction, politics and reality, the sense of promise and the American dream, the minds of powerful Americans and the domain of secrets. People who construct personalities whose realities are never as real and exact as those they designed on their own facades, which seem ready to explode in this acidic and intriguing novel, a novel of these times.

The Revelation , AM Homes (Anagrama).