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4kids4me's review
2.0
I expected this to be a memoir, but instead, learned more about the Bailey’s brother’s terribly sad life than I learned about Bailey. Based on the description, I thought this book was going to be funny, but except for some bits of humor here and there, it was a disturbing account of his brother’s struggle with drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness. Bailey’s tone is unsympathetic and flippant throughout. Several times, Bailey makes reference to people in his life who believe Bailey is also alcoholic, yet he never really gives us much insight into his own life, for instance, how he managed to go from a sort of aimless college grad to respected author.
In the end, the book itself is well-written, but I just didn’t understand what Bailey’s point was in writing this book. He comes across as self-indulgent with very little regard for what may have driven his brother into such a downward spiral and no real desire to help him. Instead, Bailey seems determined to get him out of his life. There is nothing insightful about this book. Hard to believe this was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
In the end, the book itself is well-written, but I just didn’t understand what Bailey’s point was in writing this book. He comes across as self-indulgent with very little regard for what may have driven his brother into such a downward spiral and no real desire to help him. Instead, Bailey seems determined to get him out of his life. There is nothing insightful about this book. Hard to believe this was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
cokie's review
5.0
Stunning. I read this in one sitting. Bailey is an amazing writer--unsparing, unsentimental, fearless. It was all the more riveting because I knew these people--I worked for Bailey's father' law firm. Contrary to what one reviewer said, these were all exceedingly charming people, adept at hiding their pain. The few times I met Scott, he just seemed sweet and sad. I was horrified to learn how bad things actually were, and feel nothing but compassion for any of them.
tippycanoegal's review
3.0
The memoir of a family utterly without compassion. We follow the lives of Bailey and his family, with a focus on his brother Chris’s spiral through drugs, jail, alcohol, vagrancy, and finally death. Bailey is unsparing (and, one might argue, cruel) in his dissection of the important moments that laid the path to the inevitable suicide of his brother, but there is little empathy in his brush--he is the Lucian Freud of memoirists, and seems to almost rejoice in his detailed descriptions of the pimples on his brother’s face and the dissolute lives that he and his brother lead. He draws a surprisingly delicate veil around the issue of child abuse, which is hinted at and which would make sense--when children behave cruelly towards one another, it is generally learned from the adults around them. As searingly revealing as the book is, the harshness of each family member seems strange from one who makes a living as a biographer. Without empathy or compassion, the entire family seems doomed from the start.
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