The Unfolding by A.M. Homes
The Big Guy is a smooth talker, a networker, and he’s got a plan to take back control of his country. It’s the 2008 American presidential election, and the Big Guy’shorse, John McCain, has lost the race to Barack Obama. For the Big Guy’s entire family, congregated as they are with Republican Party leaders in a Baltimore hotel, this moment represents a morbid turn in American culture and a death to democracy. The Big Guy takes personal responsibility and, in order to reclaim their America from what they see as its descent into chaos, assembles a team of ‘men of fortune’ – their fortunes a result of ‘hard work and elbow grease’ and, naturally, a few unacknowledged million-dollar handouts from friends and family.
The Big Guy is the essence of every old, rich, white Republican, driven by the belief that he’s entitled to everything in the world. His entire life – his family and his social circles – revolves around his identity as a Republican. He spews rhetoric of the American Dream like a weapon, fighting tooth and nail for his conservative ideals despite their glaringly obvious hypocrisy. In this sense, A.M. Homes skilfully explores how the political language of concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘freedom’ hold different meanings in the characters’ lives and the detrimental impact this has on communities. When the reality-altering presidential election loss hits the Big Guy, he squirms to retain power. When it hits his wife Charlotte, she becomes obsessed with the life she was unable to have, and when it hits his daughter Megan, she begins to question everything about the version of that history she’s been taught.
The Unfolding details the slow descent of a family’s reality, one contingent on fragile political beliefs. Though times have changed drastically since 2008, and the coups discussed by the Big Guy and his vanguard are no longer fiction, Homes’ alternative history and its take on political bipartisanship still feels refreshing and eerie in its plausibility. Equal parts political satire and domestic drama, The Unfolding brings to life the liminal spaces between victory and loss, marriage and divorce, childhood naivety and adult reality.
