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[In a refurbished farmhouse in Red Hook, New York, an iPhone rings, chiming Slow Rise]—Yeah? —Nick, buddy! Hey, it's time for another book.—Already? Didn't I just do one? —It was poetry, Nick. Poetry doesn't count. How about another memoir?—I mean, I've already done three. —Who's counting? What've you got for me?—There are some rocks on my desk. I like the rocks. I can lick them. —Keep going.—I dunno. My mom's still dead? She still burnt up the house? I cheated on my wife for five years? I kind
before i only had to not say a few things. now i'm supposed to say everything. it is hard to imagine a writer more forthright than nick flynn. works like absolution or perhaps even penance. books mining tragedy and pathos, yet returning to the surface with substance transmogrified; a gaze over into the abyss yielding not a hard-won peace, but instead a more valuable respite. the fact is, we are so lost inside ourselves sometimes that it is impossible to think of other people, even those we
I was extremely, extremely excited to get my hands on this; after all, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is one of my all-time fave memoirs. But I just wasn't able to get into this one, though I did try. I'll be back though, Nick!! I promise.
Don't know what to say about this book. A memoir? One of several it appears. He's a poet, and writer, with a traumatic upbringing, but this book had me crossing my eyes sometimes. Rambling, and odd. Just couldn't wait to finish it. Don't think I'll read anything of his again.
Not at all the kind of memoir I’d want to leave to MY daughter. I did not like author’s style of writing at all but I wish him well as he continues to deal with his insecurities and demons of his past.
ARC received at PLA - NashvilleBeautifully written memoir.Haunting.Disturbing.Familiar.*Only reason why it's not 5 stars is because I reserve those for books that I will read again. This I will not read again but it's deserving of 5 stars.
It's hard to imagine a bigger Nick Flynn fan than me, which is why I'm so conflicted about this memoir. On the one hand, I devoured it in one day, so I must have liked it, right? And it's true that by the end I was caught up in Flynn's writing just like I always am, his voice taking over my brain. So that's all good.But I cannot deny that the first half of this book felt rather old hat to me, like Flynn was treading the same ground he'd gone over many times before, and when he eventually got to
The other day when I reviewed The Good Family Fitzgerald, I mentioned that I intended to finish reading and reviewing the remaining 2020 selections of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club by the end of the year. I have finished reading the 5 books in this little challenge but with only two days left in December, I may find it even more challenging to fit in all the reviews. But first, a bit of a rant. I saw in the news recently that Bertlesmann, the international media conglomerate, who already owns
Honestly this would be a much better book if 1) Nick Flynn could make his 3 or 4 different story threads connect together in a more cohesive way; and 2) he could go just a bit deeper with his research drawing comparisons to Dante or Jung. He quotes Joan Didion at one point and his writing style reminds me of someone who tried to mimic hers but only made it 60% of the way there. But to be fair to Flynn, most people couldn't even get that close to her.I'm a sucker for braided narrative memoirs, an...
An interesting and deeply affecting read for me. Many lines and quotes I wanted to capture, but was afraid if I took them out of the book they wouldn't be there for the next reader to discover.An autobiography that read like a bestselling novel, told in brief snippets, leaving enough to the imagination that it transported me back to my childhood, where I found myself reliving adventures gone well and some that went awry. This book will take you wherever you allow it to, and isn't that the best p...
There are moments when a writer is so obviously, just, going for it. Swinging for the fences, shooting for the stars, tying a bow on it all--there are numerous metaphors that capture the nature of these attempts. But what happens when the fireworks are lit, only for the fuse to fizzle out? The explosion never comes. The sense of failed expectations is total. Meanwhile, after his failed trick, the author is lying on the pavement, blood leaking from his knees, snapped skateboard off to the side. B...
This is breathtaking. a beautiful prose poem. Nick Flynn vulnerably seeks his own psychic health. Where “Bullshit Night...” was about his father, “House On Fire” is about his mother, but not only. Flynn could hold his father at a distance, his mother however, raised him, formed him. Reading it, I got the sense he isn’t digging into his developmental wounds just for himself, or for his daughter, or his wife; his story of recovery is an offering to all of us.
This is not an easy book to review. I'll touch on two things: style and content.The style is extremely poetic, sometimes verging on "just too much." I can see why some people would find the lyricism over the top. But I loved it. Flynn writes like a scrapbook of moments that are snatched out of memory: snips of time and space that snag on our minds for decades. I'm sure everyone has moments like this, Proustian associations that just don't leave. Flynn writes like that. He's able to distill a sce...
3 1/2 starsA melodic memoir told partly in stories he is telling his daughter about his upbringing and partly in the prose of his own working through the trauma of his chaotic childhood and failures in adulthood. He is very open of his failings in his marriage and his desire to give his young daughter a better childhood and parent than he had. On one hand we see this wonderful relationship he is developing with his daughter taking her to revisit his hometown and on the other we see how insane an...
There is such a raw honesty here. Flynn doesn’t hold back from shining a very bright, sometimes harsh, light on his life. At times, the lyric qualities in his writing tend to draw too much attention to themselves; his crafting of sentences or images distracts a bit from the message. But I’m a big fan ever since Another Bullshit Night, and I think this memoir reveals a writer flexing different muscles to tell the truth(s) of his life.
I tried to get through this but couldn't. I guess I prefer a more shallow and direct memoir and style of writing. Flynn leaves little nuggets of the story here and there while he spins self-indulgent and overly poetic reflections on his life as a whole. Not what I was looking to read.
Nick is an extraordinary writer, reading this book I felt like I was on the Colorado River in a kayak. Nick was pulling me through, sometimes the river was calm and beautiful and other times it was dangerous and I wasn't sure what was around the bend. That's a great writer.
A thoughtful, self-deprecating new installment in Flynn's series of memoirs investigating his childhood traumas and their repercussions. What becomes the central obsession of our lives, what helps us become better human beings? Insightful book.
So the poetic, obsessive revisitation of trauma eventually becomes crabbed and indulgent? Seems about right.
Lyrical, raw, and oneiric, this is a poetic read for people who like dark memoirs (and aren't all the good ones dark, really?). Flynn revisits some of the ground he covered in his first memoir, but this focuses primarily on his mother's apparent decision to burn down the house they lived in when he was a young child in order to collect insurance money, a fire he only realizes was intentional many years after it happened. He mixes personal vignettes with poetic interludes, observations from histo...