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59
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
38/100Critics
81/100Scholars
Author:
Justin Taylor
Publisher:
Random House
Date:
July 21, 2020
A writer explores his complicated relationship with his depressed father, whose failed suicide attempt and lonely death four years later has left him haunted and altered his thinking about fatherhood and what it means to be a son.
What The Reviewers Say
Taylor’s memoir is an admirable quest to answer a question that, for many children of parents who struggle against darkness, is almost unanswerable. 'How do you save a drowning man who doesn’t want a life preserver?'.
A writer grapples with the legacy of his father’s depression and his own shadow self in this lucid memoir of connection, family, and loss.
His father’s isn’t the only ghost with whom he must come to terms, and there’s plenty of additional insightful observations about the stories we tell ourselves and the differences between the way we shape a story and the way we live our lives. A greater literary achievement than Taylor’s impressive fiction..
