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pearloz's review
3.0
Eh. Got repetitive after a while. A little too self-involved for my liking, but whatev's.
gjmaupin's review
4.0
Lovely and brief and spare and trying to be honest. Somehow the combination of a) Strauss being a Real Writer and not just someone with an interesting life story who got a memoir deal and b) admitting upfront that the process of this book was almost entirely done for his own therapeutic reasons makes it so much more worth reading than non-a), non-b) Memoirs Of Pain.
sloatsj's review
2.0
How can I say it but to say this book was dull? "Remarkable, lyrical and brave," as the blurbs say? "Inspiring and painfully raw?" "Haunting?" Uhhh, nope. Rather like a very tame, too-long therapy session about someone you’re sorry for but can’t get terribly whipped up about. Or even feel all that sorry for, because it's sad and shit luck and all that but where's crazed Dostoevsky when you actually need him? It's great to be introspective if you're, say, Fernando Pessoa.
I didn't like the style.
“My boys are named Beau and Shepherd and their arrival was like two hard kicks to the chest.”
“Sleep was a coating I’d been stripped of, leaving all my wiring exposed.”
I don’t know if it’s trying too hard or not trying hard enough. I don’t want to be ungenerous but the truth is I had to make myself finish. It was a fast read with plenty of one-page blurb chapters, but it lacked blood, tears, real torment and vividness.
“In fiction classes — or in the novelist-as-humble-cobbler image, writing workshops — you find that epiphany has a pretty high rate of occurrence.”
(A “high rate of occurrence?” For real?)
“But when you tell your own story honestly, that epiphany thing is rare: there is no walk, there is no fated grab. You try every fruit, or forget, losing sight of any destination. The only changes are emergencies or blessings: when you wake up, notice the surroundings, then fall back, and wander more.”
There. To me it was a bit tedious.
I didn't like the style.
“My boys are named Beau and Shepherd and their arrival was like two hard kicks to the chest.”
“Sleep was a coating I’d been stripped of, leaving all my wiring exposed.”
I don’t know if it’s trying too hard or not trying hard enough. I don’t want to be ungenerous but the truth is I had to make myself finish. It was a fast read with plenty of one-page blurb chapters, but it lacked blood, tears, real torment and vividness.
“In fiction classes — or in the novelist-as-humble-cobbler image, writing workshops — you find that epiphany has a pretty high rate of occurrence.”
(A “high rate of occurrence?” For real?)
“But when you tell your own story honestly, that epiphany thing is rare: there is no walk, there is no fated grab. You try every fruit, or forget, losing sight of any destination. The only changes are emergencies or blessings: when you wake up, notice the surroundings, then fall back, and wander more.”
There. To me it was a bit tedious.
nleetester's review
3.0
Read this for a class. It was devoid of raw emotion, but well written and honest. It could just be that I am unused to male memoirists (other than my favorite, Dave Eggers). This lacked humor and grace and seemed to hum along at a low frequency of emotion. I can see how his writing could be impactful for some readers, but I didn't connect with it. It is, however, a subject that isn't explored often - the accidental/incidental guilt-ridden killer, so I found that fascinating.
mrsfligs's review
4.0
Here is the first line of this memoir:
Half my life ago, I killed a girl.
The girl who died is Celine Zilke—a 16-year-old girl who was attending the same Long Island high school as Strauss (who was 18 at the time of the accident). He takes us through what he can remember of the accident, in which Strauss’s car hit Zilke as she was riding her bike and swerved into his lane. He memory of the accident is in bits and pieces—almost as freeze frame images.
EXCERPT: This moment has been, for all my life, a kind of shadowy giant. I’m able, tick by tick, to remember each second before it. Radio; friends; thoughts of mini-golf; another thought of maybe just going to the beach; the distance between car and bicycle closing; anything could still happen. But I am powerless to see what comes next; the moment raises a shoulder, lowers its head, and slumps away.
Although the police clear him of wrongdoing, Strauss’s life is forever changed. From his struggles to live up to the promise he made to Celine’s mother (“Whatever you do in your life, you have to do it twice as well now because you are living for two people”) to his need to face judgment in a public forum, Strauss is influenced in a thousand different ways by the accident and his inability to know how to feel about it and cope with its aftermath.
EXCERPT: But something in me—the same tiny something that had longed for Melanie Urquhart’s anger—craved, finally, a decision from twelve people. They’d hear witnesses, cops, statistics, the journal entry. It would no longer be just my daily fluctuating opinion. The official world would have to listen, nod, and answer the question of that highway and that day. A government-sanctioned conclusion: you are culpable; you are blameless. This could bring ruin as easily as release. but the one sure thing it would bring was an end.
Written in spare and elegant prose, the book is never exploitative or self-pitying. Instead, Strauss strips things down to the bone and offers brutally honest assessments of what he was thinking, feeling and experiencing as he struggles to come to terms with the accident. As you might imagine, it is a process that never truly comes to an end and offers no clear-cut answers. Like a ghost, Celine accompanies Darin through his twenties and thirties—present at every first, at every important moment in life. She is the conversation he tries to avoid but eventually must always have. Only when he has moved further in time from the accident (half a life away) is he able to start exploring the full impact and meaning of the accident.
EXCERPT: It’s not that I outran Celine, or that half of my life. It’s the reverse. The accident taught me this. Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future. But we keep making our way, as we have to. We’re all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that’s the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. As as we age, we’re riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. So it’s an epiphany after all. You have it in your hand the whole time.
I imagine that is was difficult to write this memoir, and I’m thankful that Strauss was able to look deep within and offer up his experiences in this book. By doing so, he creates a haunting story that resonates long after you turn the last page.
Half my life ago, I killed a girl.
The girl who died is Celine Zilke—a 16-year-old girl who was attending the same Long Island high school as Strauss (who was 18 at the time of the accident). He takes us through what he can remember of the accident, in which Strauss’s car hit Zilke as she was riding her bike and swerved into his lane. He memory of the accident is in bits and pieces—almost as freeze frame images.
EXCERPT: This moment has been, for all my life, a kind of shadowy giant. I’m able, tick by tick, to remember each second before it. Radio; friends; thoughts of mini-golf; another thought of maybe just going to the beach; the distance between car and bicycle closing; anything could still happen. But I am powerless to see what comes next; the moment raises a shoulder, lowers its head, and slumps away.
Although the police clear him of wrongdoing, Strauss’s life is forever changed. From his struggles to live up to the promise he made to Celine’s mother (“Whatever you do in your life, you have to do it twice as well now because you are living for two people”) to his need to face judgment in a public forum, Strauss is influenced in a thousand different ways by the accident and his inability to know how to feel about it and cope with its aftermath.
EXCERPT: But something in me—the same tiny something that had longed for Melanie Urquhart’s anger—craved, finally, a decision from twelve people. They’d hear witnesses, cops, statistics, the journal entry. It would no longer be just my daily fluctuating opinion. The official world would have to listen, nod, and answer the question of that highway and that day. A government-sanctioned conclusion: you are culpable; you are blameless. This could bring ruin as easily as release. but the one sure thing it would bring was an end.
Written in spare and elegant prose, the book is never exploitative or self-pitying. Instead, Strauss strips things down to the bone and offers brutally honest assessments of what he was thinking, feeling and experiencing as he struggles to come to terms with the accident. As you might imagine, it is a process that never truly comes to an end and offers no clear-cut answers. Like a ghost, Celine accompanies Darin through his twenties and thirties—present at every first, at every important moment in life. She is the conversation he tries to avoid but eventually must always have. Only when he has moved further in time from the accident (half a life away) is he able to start exploring the full impact and meaning of the accident.
EXCERPT: It’s not that I outran Celine, or that half of my life. It’s the reverse. The accident taught me this. Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future. But we keep making our way, as we have to. We’re all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that’s the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. As as we age, we’re riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. So it’s an epiphany after all. You have it in your hand the whole time.
I imagine that is was difficult to write this memoir, and I’m thankful that Strauss was able to look deep within and offer up his experiences in this book. By doing so, he creates a haunting story that resonates long after you turn the last page.
palindromephd's review against another edition
3.0
Was supposed to read this for class a year ago, just pulled it off the shelf today and read it in an hour. Quite moving for being so brief and a good account of the complexity of grief.
anniefox's review
5.0
It takes enormous courage to write a memoir that pulls no punches documenting less-than-exemplary behavior. More courage, still, when you recount social "acts" which you knew were "performances" consciously designed to increase your ratings with friends and complete strangers. Darin Straus shows that courage on every page.
simplymary's review
4.0
One of the most honest memoirs I've read. I like his crisp, simple, elegant style, and that he leaves no stone unturned in trying to figure out his grief. The author accidentally killed a girl on a bike right before graduating from high school and writes to finally come to terms with it, 18 years later. Beautiful perspective.
roxannima's review
5.0
This was an absolutely amazing memoir. So incredibly heartfelt and real - you could feel it in Strauss' writing that this is something he has struggled with since the accident happened. I'm excited to read his novels now.