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Home is Burning
Dave Eggers meets David Sedaris in this uproariously funny, unflinchingly honest, and tender memoir.
Dan's mom has always had cancer. First diagnosed when he was only ten years old, she was the model of resilience throughout his childhood, fighting her disease with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush. But just as she faces a relapse, her husband —a successful businessman and devoted father—is diagnosed with ALS. He is told that in a few months' time, he be unable to walk, eat, or breathe on his own. Dan, a recent college graduate living the good life in Los Angeles, has no choice but to return home to help.
Reinstalled in his parents' basement (in one of the only non-Mormon homes in a Salt Lake City subdivision) Dan is reunited with his siblings. His older sister Tiffany is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. Younger brother Greg comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. Younger sister Michelle is a sullen teenager experimenting with drinking and flirting with her 35-year-old soccer coach. And baby sister Chelsea—the oddest duck in a family of misfits—can only think about dance. Together they form Team Terminal, going to battle against their parents' illnesses and cracking plenty of jokes along the way.
As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that you don't get to choose when it's time to grow up.
Dan's mom has always had cancer. First diagnosed when he was only ten years old, she was the model of resilience throughout his childhood, fighting her disease with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush. But just as she faces a relapse, her husband —a successful businessman and devoted father—is diagnosed with ALS. He is told that in a few months' time, he be unable to walk, eat, or breathe on his own. Dan, a recent college graduate living the good life in Los Angeles, has no choice but to return home to help.
Reinstalled in his parents' basement (in one of the only non-Mormon homes in a Salt Lake City subdivision) Dan is reunited with his siblings. His older sister Tiffany is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. Younger brother Greg comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. Younger sister Michelle is a sullen teenager experimenting with drinking and flirting with her 35-year-old soccer coach. And baby sister Chelsea—the oddest duck in a family of misfits—can only think about dance. Together they form Team Terminal, going to battle against their parents' illnesses and cracking plenty of jokes along the way.
As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that you don't get to choose when it's time to grow up.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 20, 2015
116 people are currently reading
7350 people want to read
About the author
Dan Marshall
39 books122 followersDAN MARSHALL grew up in a nice home with nice parents in Salt Lake City, Utah, before attending UC Berkeley. After college, Dan worked at a strategic communications public relations firm in Los Angeles. At 25, he left work and returned to Salt Lake to take care of his sick parents. While caring for them, he started writing detailed accounts about many of their weird, sad, funny adventures. Home is Burning is his first book.
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June 26, 2018
One hundred percent of our parents are terminally ill.
so, i mostly didn't like this book.
and now you're looking at me like i'm a heartless robot, "how can you hate on a memoir about a guy whose father has ALS and whose mother has cancer? you are a monster!!"
and maybe i am, but there was so much about this book that just pissed me off. i have put off writing this review for a long time, because i have this fundamental squeamishness when it comes to reviewing memoirs. it feels like judging a person's life, and that's uncomfortable for me. because i am nice.
but so much of this book made me uncomfortable.
and it's not at all for the things that many readers will find problematic: the profanity and the crude humor.
because anyone who is cranky about that only has themselves to blame. in the preface, there's ample cussin' as well as a kiddie porn/catholic joke, some mormon-teasing, sex, porn, a reference to a sports team called "the chinks," etc. he's very up-front about his family's reliance on profanity and irreverence. and i'm fine with that - i appreciate mordant humor and i have a potty-mouth myself.
but it's the sheer incompetence of the way they handle their situation and the way they "care" for their father in his illness. and now we're back to me and my problems with reviewing the memoir, because that roughly translates into - "dear stranger - you did a shitty job taking care of your father." i don't read many memoirs unless they are by an entertainer i like or if i hear such good things about the book that i am compelled to check it out. i read this for that group i used to read for, and i was kind of surprised that i was the only one who wasn't feeling it. everyone else was calling it "brave" and "angry," and "iconoclastic," and i was finding it very difficult to see what they were responding to. because i don't think it is very angry. i think it is petulant. and it's not iconoclastic, it's just got more dick jokes than your average illness-memoir. and brave just seems to mean willing to say "fuck" a lot and talk about how many blowjobs my mom gave my dad when he was suffering. that's not really brave so much as unseemly. i'm no prude, but there's a point where continued repetitive focus on things that are supposedly shocking causes even the most candid sharing of shit people don't usually talk about to become… boring.
but to backtrack. so this is a family of self-proclaimed "rich white assholes."
rich:
It was a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom, three-story redbrick mansion surrounded by pine, aspen, and cottonwood trees. It boasted a tennis court, a swimming pool, a trampoline, a drinking fountain, three pinball machines, hot tub, and a gazebo.
white is self-explanatory.
assholes:
And it was a giant middle finger to all our Mormon neighbors. "Ha ha. We don't even believe in God and we still have a better house than you," we'd think.
it's a family of seven, where the mother was diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma in 1992, and spent most of her children's lives sick. during that time, the father stepped up and basically raised the five kids himself while his wife suffered through chemo and blood transfusions and weakness but eventually rallied - fourteen years later still alive and kicking and cussing. and then suddenly, beloved dad is diagnosed with lou gherig's disease, and the family falls apart.
this isn't an inspirational story, and it's not the david sedaris-style "my family is kooky," this is actually alarming. the author's fifteen year old adopted native american sister is an alcoholic frequently found covered in vomit in various places around the house, who steals their parents' credit cards and who eventually runs off with her 35-year-old mormon soccer coach; a relationship that was tacitly acknowledged for at least a year. no one realizes that another sister has asperger's (and is not just "immature") until she is fifteen. she is also deaf in one ear and has kidney problems. the older brother is fine; he was born with cerebral palsy but has no lasting health issues, but his sexuality provides the author plenty of opportunities to make gay jokes. the oldest sister feels she shouldered the burden of helping raise all these brats when she was a teenager, and while she is the most conservative and level-headed of all the siblings, she's very much looking for someone else to step up this time. and the author is the jester, the off-color clown who seems to take pride in how hapless and selfish he can be.
the punchline to "how many rich white assholes does it take to change a lightbulb:"
But we were so used to having our dad do everything that we didn't know how to do anything. For example, once it took me forty-five minutes to change a lightbulb. I thought an old one had broken off in the socket. I had read somewhere that a potato could grip the bulb and spin it out. I started there. The potato didn't work. Before I knew it I had an apple up there, then a banana, then a cantaloupe, then a Fruit Roll-Up, and then I went back to the potato. It turned out that all I had to do from the get-go was screw in a fresh bulb. In the end, the whole fixture was destroyed and smelled like the produce section of a grocery store.
and this guy is going to help care for his beloved dying father.
the book is all deliberate provocation and dark humor and intentionally making other people feel uncomfortable, even when his friends say to him - "dude, not cool." he claims I was pretty desensitized to tragedy because my mom had been sick my whole life, but other people my age weren't, but it seems more than just putting a brave and humorous face on tragedy. banding together and referring to the family as "team terminal" is one thing. realizations like I was attempting to fight Lou Gehrig's disease with humor, but no one had the patience for come-on-the-face jokes. Things were getting really serious is also fine.
because i understand using humor as a defense mechanism.
"I know it sucks that Dad's dying and all, but it's pretty fucking sweet that we're going to have an elevator in the house."
i understand being so angry and frustrated that you just want to howl expletives into the world. i understand being caustic and flippant to avoid showing vulnerability or acknowledge your own grief.
They were holding hands and kissing all the time. It was sort of disgusting, really - a couple of dying fucks making out and shit.
but the number of times they slam their beloved father's wheelchair into the doorway because they're too busy goofing off to pay attention to what they're doing, or the number of times they flat out don't listen to the doctors' instructions or fail to comprehend their father's physical limitations, causing him more distress as he waits for someone to help him go to the bathroom - that's not funny, that's just fucked-up. there are so many scenes where doctors, nurses, neighbors are frustrated by their unwillingness to learn how to care for a terminal person, and it just doesn't seem to make an impression.
it's kind of shocking to read a book like this in which a family is plagued by so many problems and realize you have no sympathy at all for the author. he insists "we did the best we could," and maybe he even believes it, but it doesn't read that way at all. it's not that caring for someone with a terminal illness is so hard, it's that these people aren't willing to put in the required effort. it's NOT hard to NOT crash your father into a wall when you're wheeling him through the hospital. it's NOT hard to remember to make sure he has enough oxygen in his tank or to remember to bring kleenex or extra pants in case he loses control of his bowels. so much for dying with dignity. why you wouldn't hire someone to make your father's care easier when you are such rich white assholes is bananas, but if you take on the responsibility because you love him so much, then take on the fucking responsibility. step the fuck up and give back to the man who gave you life, love, and all the money that seems so important to you.
This news meant we might lose the guy who had made our lives as awesome as they were. It might mean no more time-shares in the Palm Desert. It was a scary thought.
it's just wholly immature. to the point of coming across as sadistic.
My dad wasn't very excited about the thought of communicating through a computer. He was trying to hang on to the things he cold do for as long as he could. He wasn't ready to give up his voice yet, so he saw the ECO as a tool to be used down the road, and only if completely necessary.
But I was pretty excited about it. Not because I wanted my dad to lose his voice, but because I viewed the ECO as a new toy. The second I heard that my dad was getting a computer that could talk to him, my face lit up. My palms got sweaty. I smiled for the first time in weeks. I couldn't wait to program phrases into the computer and hear it say them back in a Stephen Hawking-esque voice. I had always wanted to hear Stephen Hawking say, "Fuck my anus, you heavy-cocked whore," and with the ECO, I finally could.
and does, programming it to say such things as "There's a knife downstairs. Please kill me" and "Boy, I could use a blow job."
stories like this are mitigated somewhat by how the author's family, including his father, frequently encourage the behavior. there's a complicity that i guess is supposed to make the reader-as-outsider interpret it as okay because wacky! but i just find it horrible and gross
I hadn't even taken the time to learn how to pronounce the disease that was killing my father.
and for all the things in this book that are supposed to be hilariously bold and shocking and offensive, the only thing about this book i actually found offensive (besides, of course, their complete ineptitude) was its constant struggle to be funny. people who think that they are funny and aren't are as excruciating as people who think they can sing, but can't. the first page of the preface alone has three four misfire jokes all in a row, which pretty much sets the tone for the book. there are some things in here that are genuinely funny, but there's so much returning to the same well: dick joke, gay joke, mormon joke, death joke, fart joke - it gets old, fast.
so i had to ask myself - why do people read memoirs? i think some of it is to read about someone who has gone through the same things the reader has gone through, or to find hope or healing or whatever, or to laugh in the face of death. problem is, this just isn't funny. and there's no sense that he's learned anything or changed during the course of this. because even after his father dies - spoiler alert - there's no cure for ALS, he's still a selfish white asshole, as evidenced by the last story with his mother. throughout the book, there's this undercurrent of resentment towards his mother. for wanting attention when the stress causes her to relapse, for jealousy, maybe for being sick in the first place. but it's just more of his own need to have the attention on himself.
Although I was sort of used to it, I didn't really like to see my mom have chemicals blasted into her frail body. It didn't seem right. My mom was supposed to be there to love me unconditionally, to support me, to spoil me, to help me feel safe and confident enough to pursue my dreams and make the most of my life. She wasn't supposed to be saying crazy shit and running to the bathroom every few minutes.
the thing this book does really well is to provide a frank and candid look at the debilitating nature of als, and how rapid the decline. it's occasionally touching, and you have to wonder how much of this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but for me, it was hard to excuse the incompetence, the sense of outraged entitlement, of how inconvenient disease can be to the gilded life.
A sense of humor is all you really need to get through life
but also empathy, right?
and of course, this has already been optioned for a movie starring film darling miles teller. and as a movie, it will probably be very successful and entertaining - everyone loves dysfunctional families, everyone loves a trainwreck and reality teeveee. and i can see some of the edges of this being softened somewhat in a movie which will make my review/me look like a - well, a white asshole anyway. not the rich part. the problem here is in the details, and i just can't see anecdotes like this:
"The chair is running out of batteries fast. We should turn around and head back," my dad struggled to say. Fuck. We hadn't properly charged the chair, so it had run out of battery power. We had to turn back. We were epic shitheads, and on Father's Day. I had wanted to use the day to show how much we really did love and appreciate him. I wanted to show him that we didn't mind caring for our pal, because he had spent so much of his life caring for us. I wanted the day to be a reflection of how great we were capable of being, instead of how shitty the situation had made us. Oh well.
coming across as lovably clueless and not what it is - just lazy shitty ungrateful behavior.
oh well, indeed.
2.5 stars rounded up because i still feel uncomfortable disliking it.
come to my blog!
so, i mostly didn't like this book.
and now you're looking at me like i'm a heartless robot, "how can you hate on a memoir about a guy whose father has ALS and whose mother has cancer? you are a monster!!"
and maybe i am, but there was so much about this book that just pissed me off. i have put off writing this review for a long time, because i have this fundamental squeamishness when it comes to reviewing memoirs. it feels like judging a person's life, and that's uncomfortable for me. because i am nice.
but so much of this book made me uncomfortable.
and it's not at all for the things that many readers will find problematic: the profanity and the crude humor.
because anyone who is cranky about that only has themselves to blame. in the preface, there's ample cussin' as well as a kiddie porn/catholic joke, some mormon-teasing, sex, porn, a reference to a sports team called "the chinks," etc. he's very up-front about his family's reliance on profanity and irreverence. and i'm fine with that - i appreciate mordant humor and i have a potty-mouth myself.
but it's the sheer incompetence of the way they handle their situation and the way they "care" for their father in his illness. and now we're back to me and my problems with reviewing the memoir, because that roughly translates into - "dear stranger - you did a shitty job taking care of your father." i don't read many memoirs unless they are by an entertainer i like or if i hear such good things about the book that i am compelled to check it out. i read this for that group i used to read for, and i was kind of surprised that i was the only one who wasn't feeling it. everyone else was calling it "brave" and "angry," and "iconoclastic," and i was finding it very difficult to see what they were responding to. because i don't think it is very angry. i think it is petulant. and it's not iconoclastic, it's just got more dick jokes than your average illness-memoir. and brave just seems to mean willing to say "fuck" a lot and talk about how many blowjobs my mom gave my dad when he was suffering. that's not really brave so much as unseemly. i'm no prude, but there's a point where continued repetitive focus on things that are supposedly shocking causes even the most candid sharing of shit people don't usually talk about to become… boring.
but to backtrack. so this is a family of self-proclaimed "rich white assholes."
rich:
It was a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom, three-story redbrick mansion surrounded by pine, aspen, and cottonwood trees. It boasted a tennis court, a swimming pool, a trampoline, a drinking fountain, three pinball machines, hot tub, and a gazebo.
white is self-explanatory.
assholes:
And it was a giant middle finger to all our Mormon neighbors. "Ha ha. We don't even believe in God and we still have a better house than you," we'd think.
it's a family of seven, where the mother was diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma in 1992, and spent most of her children's lives sick. during that time, the father stepped up and basically raised the five kids himself while his wife suffered through chemo and blood transfusions and weakness but eventually rallied - fourteen years later still alive and kicking and cussing. and then suddenly, beloved dad is diagnosed with lou gherig's disease, and the family falls apart.
this isn't an inspirational story, and it's not the david sedaris-style "my family is kooky," this is actually alarming. the author's fifteen year old adopted native american sister is an alcoholic frequently found covered in vomit in various places around the house, who steals their parents' credit cards and who eventually runs off with her 35-year-old mormon soccer coach; a relationship that was tacitly acknowledged for at least a year. no one realizes that another sister has asperger's (and is not just "immature") until she is fifteen. she is also deaf in one ear and has kidney problems. the older brother is fine; he was born with cerebral palsy but has no lasting health issues, but his sexuality provides the author plenty of opportunities to make gay jokes. the oldest sister feels she shouldered the burden of helping raise all these brats when she was a teenager, and while she is the most conservative and level-headed of all the siblings, she's very much looking for someone else to step up this time. and the author is the jester, the off-color clown who seems to take pride in how hapless and selfish he can be.
the punchline to "how many rich white assholes does it take to change a lightbulb:"
But we were so used to having our dad do everything that we didn't know how to do anything. For example, once it took me forty-five minutes to change a lightbulb. I thought an old one had broken off in the socket. I had read somewhere that a potato could grip the bulb and spin it out. I started there. The potato didn't work. Before I knew it I had an apple up there, then a banana, then a cantaloupe, then a Fruit Roll-Up, and then I went back to the potato. It turned out that all I had to do from the get-go was screw in a fresh bulb. In the end, the whole fixture was destroyed and smelled like the produce section of a grocery store.
and this guy is going to help care for his beloved dying father.
the book is all deliberate provocation and dark humor and intentionally making other people feel uncomfortable, even when his friends say to him - "dude, not cool." he claims I was pretty desensitized to tragedy because my mom had been sick my whole life, but other people my age weren't, but it seems more than just putting a brave and humorous face on tragedy. banding together and referring to the family as "team terminal" is one thing. realizations like I was attempting to fight Lou Gehrig's disease with humor, but no one had the patience for come-on-the-face jokes. Things were getting really serious is also fine.
because i understand using humor as a defense mechanism.
"I know it sucks that Dad's dying and all, but it's pretty fucking sweet that we're going to have an elevator in the house."
i understand being so angry and frustrated that you just want to howl expletives into the world. i understand being caustic and flippant to avoid showing vulnerability or acknowledge your own grief.
They were holding hands and kissing all the time. It was sort of disgusting, really - a couple of dying fucks making out and shit.
but the number of times they slam their beloved father's wheelchair into the doorway because they're too busy goofing off to pay attention to what they're doing, or the number of times they flat out don't listen to the doctors' instructions or fail to comprehend their father's physical limitations, causing him more distress as he waits for someone to help him go to the bathroom - that's not funny, that's just fucked-up. there are so many scenes where doctors, nurses, neighbors are frustrated by their unwillingness to learn how to care for a terminal person, and it just doesn't seem to make an impression.
it's kind of shocking to read a book like this in which a family is plagued by so many problems and realize you have no sympathy at all for the author. he insists "we did the best we could," and maybe he even believes it, but it doesn't read that way at all. it's not that caring for someone with a terminal illness is so hard, it's that these people aren't willing to put in the required effort. it's NOT hard to NOT crash your father into a wall when you're wheeling him through the hospital. it's NOT hard to remember to make sure he has enough oxygen in his tank or to remember to bring kleenex or extra pants in case he loses control of his bowels. so much for dying with dignity. why you wouldn't hire someone to make your father's care easier when you are such rich white assholes is bananas, but if you take on the responsibility because you love him so much, then take on the fucking responsibility. step the fuck up and give back to the man who gave you life, love, and all the money that seems so important to you.
This news meant we might lose the guy who had made our lives as awesome as they were. It might mean no more time-shares in the Palm Desert. It was a scary thought.
it's just wholly immature. to the point of coming across as sadistic.
My dad wasn't very excited about the thought of communicating through a computer. He was trying to hang on to the things he cold do for as long as he could. He wasn't ready to give up his voice yet, so he saw the ECO as a tool to be used down the road, and only if completely necessary.
But I was pretty excited about it. Not because I wanted my dad to lose his voice, but because I viewed the ECO as a new toy. The second I heard that my dad was getting a computer that could talk to him, my face lit up. My palms got sweaty. I smiled for the first time in weeks. I couldn't wait to program phrases into the computer and hear it say them back in a Stephen Hawking-esque voice. I had always wanted to hear Stephen Hawking say, "Fuck my anus, you heavy-cocked whore," and with the ECO, I finally could.
and does, programming it to say such things as "There's a knife downstairs. Please kill me" and "Boy, I could use a blow job."
stories like this are mitigated somewhat by how the author's family, including his father, frequently encourage the behavior. there's a complicity that i guess is supposed to make the reader-as-outsider interpret it as okay because wacky! but i just find it horrible and gross
I hadn't even taken the time to learn how to pronounce the disease that was killing my father.
and for all the things in this book that are supposed to be hilariously bold and shocking and offensive, the only thing about this book i actually found offensive (besides, of course, their complete ineptitude) was its constant struggle to be funny. people who think that they are funny and aren't are as excruciating as people who think they can sing, but can't. the first page of the preface alone has three four misfire jokes all in a row, which pretty much sets the tone for the book. there are some things in here that are genuinely funny, but there's so much returning to the same well: dick joke, gay joke, mormon joke, death joke, fart joke - it gets old, fast.
so i had to ask myself - why do people read memoirs? i think some of it is to read about someone who has gone through the same things the reader has gone through, or to find hope or healing or whatever, or to laugh in the face of death. problem is, this just isn't funny. and there's no sense that he's learned anything or changed during the course of this. because even after his father dies - spoiler alert - there's no cure for ALS, he's still a selfish white asshole, as evidenced by the last story with his mother. throughout the book, there's this undercurrent of resentment towards his mother. for wanting attention when the stress causes her to relapse, for jealousy, maybe for being sick in the first place. but it's just more of his own need to have the attention on himself.
Although I was sort of used to it, I didn't really like to see my mom have chemicals blasted into her frail body. It didn't seem right. My mom was supposed to be there to love me unconditionally, to support me, to spoil me, to help me feel safe and confident enough to pursue my dreams and make the most of my life. She wasn't supposed to be saying crazy shit and running to the bathroom every few minutes.
the thing this book does really well is to provide a frank and candid look at the debilitating nature of als, and how rapid the decline. it's occasionally touching, and you have to wonder how much of this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but for me, it was hard to excuse the incompetence, the sense of outraged entitlement, of how inconvenient disease can be to the gilded life.
A sense of humor is all you really need to get through life
but also empathy, right?
and of course, this has already been optioned for a movie starring film darling miles teller. and as a movie, it will probably be very successful and entertaining - everyone loves dysfunctional families, everyone loves a trainwreck and reality teeveee. and i can see some of the edges of this being softened somewhat in a movie which will make my review/me look like a - well, a white asshole anyway. not the rich part. the problem here is in the details, and i just can't see anecdotes like this:
"The chair is running out of batteries fast. We should turn around and head back," my dad struggled to say. Fuck. We hadn't properly charged the chair, so it had run out of battery power. We had to turn back. We were epic shitheads, and on Father's Day. I had wanted to use the day to show how much we really did love and appreciate him. I wanted to show him that we didn't mind caring for our pal, because he had spent so much of his life caring for us. I wanted the day to be a reflection of how great we were capable of being, instead of how shitty the situation had made us. Oh well.
coming across as lovably clueless and not what it is - just lazy shitty ungrateful behavior.
oh well, indeed.
2.5 stars rounded up because i still feel uncomfortable disliking it.
come to my blog!
May 5, 2015
"Wow, what an amazing book. The writer is clearly some sort of genius type." - Dan Marshall
June 16, 2017
I'm the kind of person who grasps for books to speak to what I'm going through, and memoir can be really good for that. This came across in one of the emails I get of daily book deals, and I jumped at the chance, because that very day I was planning the books I'd take along when I flew home to be with my family after my father entered hospice care. You might think I'm morbid, but despite the problematic elements of this narrative, I found it somewhat comforting to read the author's account of similar atrocities - becoming the caretaker for a parent even if you aren't 100% responsible, facing the fact that many of the people in your life will withdraw while you are going through it because it is too much for them to handle, trying to have humor in the face of death because, well, can it hurt? I mean maybe it can but will it make you feel better?
Dan Marshall and I don't have the same experience exactly. His mom has battled cancer almost his entire life, and suffered a relapse around the time his father was diagnosed with ALS, a disease that claimed his father's life rather quickly, and required Dan to move back home to help with the care for a year. My parents suffered cancer back to back - my Mom fought off three kinds simultaneously (and successfully, for now, knock on wood) 2014-15, and my Dad was diagnosed with a form of cancer that was always going to be terminal at the start of 2016. What joins us together is the reality of the emotional and physical trauma of dealing with serious illness for such long periods. Yes it effects the people with the disease, but the burden is carried by all the members of the family in different ways.
The tone of the writing won't be for everyone. I'm not sure it's even for me, but there were particular circumstances at play. Here's an example:
I put this book on hold for a few days, and in that time my father passed away. I returned a few days after that to read the end, and it's a bizarre ending where suddenly he tries to be poetic and describes a dreamlike death sequence. For a person who was willing to be upfront with the dying part, he seems less comfortable with the actual death. Like his brain could only speak of it in metaphor. Bizarre (and ineffectual.)
So the author is unlikeable. He's a rich white asshole, self-declared. None of these things give you privilege over death, nor do they prepare you any better for it. And no matter that death happens all the time, it always feels like your own unique and lonely experience. I think he captures this between the lines, in his painful jokes that aren't funny, in his desperate constant use of profanity. I think the fact this is present at all may be my own imposition and empathy, and a complete accident otherwise.
Ah hell this is really a 2-star read. But I'm giving it an extra for being there when I needed someone who got it. I'm not sure I recommend it. Your mileage may vary.
Dan Marshall and I don't have the same experience exactly. His mom has battled cancer almost his entire life, and suffered a relapse around the time his father was diagnosed with ALS, a disease that claimed his father's life rather quickly, and required Dan to move back home to help with the care for a year. My parents suffered cancer back to back - my Mom fought off three kinds simultaneously (and successfully, for now, knock on wood) 2014-15, and my Dad was diagnosed with a form of cancer that was always going to be terminal at the start of 2016. What joins us together is the reality of the emotional and physical trauma of dealing with serious illness for such long periods. Yes it effects the people with the disease, but the burden is carried by all the members of the family in different ways.
The tone of the writing won't be for everyone. I'm not sure it's even for me, but there were particular circumstances at play. Here's an example:
"I could just get wrist-deep in this dying-parents shit. Feel everything. Do everything. Roll around in the mud. Really experience the horrible reality of death firsthand. That would make me a wiser and better person, right? That would help me grow up, right? That would give me life experience that would put everything else in perspective, right?"I'm not sure if you can tell from this passage but unfortunately the author is not overly likeable or mature. But something happens when someone is dying - it absorbs 150% of your energy and attention, while you're in the same room but also when you're away. At the same time there is no escape - the only way out is through. Several readers are critical of how the other children in the family are neglected, and it is troublesome, but one could argue that with a mother perpetually ill, they were already overlooked, something only magnified when the father is also out of the picture. The mother floats through the memoir in a painkiller and yogurt fog.
I put this book on hold for a few days, and in that time my father passed away. I returned a few days after that to read the end, and it's a bizarre ending where suddenly he tries to be poetic and describes a dreamlike death sequence. For a person who was willing to be upfront with the dying part, he seems less comfortable with the actual death. Like his brain could only speak of it in metaphor. Bizarre (and ineffectual.)
So the author is unlikeable. He's a rich white asshole, self-declared. None of these things give you privilege over death, nor do they prepare you any better for it. And no matter that death happens all the time, it always feels like your own unique and lonely experience. I think he captures this between the lines, in his painful jokes that aren't funny, in his desperate constant use of profanity. I think the fact this is present at all may be my own imposition and empathy, and a complete accident otherwise.
Ah hell this is really a 2-star read. But I'm giving it an extra for being there when I needed someone who got it. I'm not sure I recommend it. Your mileage may vary.
November 6, 2015
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This is a journey into a family's nightmare... at least in my opinion. The author is crude in the book, self absorbed at times in the book and he admits it all. He doesn't care what people think, he tells this story with no holds barred. Why should people put up a front about their life? Why should they hide who they are? Even if we don't always agree with the way people think or do things, I think it's awesome that he could write things that a lot of people wouldn't even admit to... now on with the review.
Dan and his brother and sisters are going through life happy enough. The older children are settling down with jobs or graduating college the younger girls are doing okay in whatever they have going on at school. Their mom has cancer and it seems like for years and years she goes through chemo.. I mean damn.. I can't imagine that, even at the end of the book in 2014 she's still going through chemo. This woman has the strength of an ox!
So here they all are with a mom that has cancer and a wonderful dad that runs marathons and owns several newspapers around the area. Then one day their healthy dad goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. Thus, the story takes off with the horrific events of having to take care of two terminally ill parents. One destined to die soon, the other that won't let cancer beat her.
I loved Dan's parents, the dad is so sweet and such a calm person. His mom is a tough as nails woman that had me laughing many times with her cussing and yelling at everyone :)
It's up to Dan and his brother Greg to take care of their dad because mom says so.. but later on toward the end they told her he had to have a nurse, so she relented.
I hate to say I enjoyed reading this book because that seems weird, but I don't mean I enjoyed it because it's a memoir of people dying, I enjoyed it because it was about a family that helped each other and excepted each other no matter what they did. They showed love and support for each other even if they bitched and complained about having to do this hard work. They were real.. just being real, but they stuck together. Some more so than others, but I digress.
I hate diseases, I hate people and animal getting diseases. I wish all diseases would just piss off!
This is a journey into a family's nightmare... at least in my opinion. The author is crude in the book, self absorbed at times in the book and he admits it all. He doesn't care what people think, he tells this story with no holds barred. Why should people put up a front about their life? Why should they hide who they are? Even if we don't always agree with the way people think or do things, I think it's awesome that he could write things that a lot of people wouldn't even admit to... now on with the review.
Dan and his brother and sisters are going through life happy enough. The older children are settling down with jobs or graduating college the younger girls are doing okay in whatever they have going on at school. Their mom has cancer and it seems like for years and years she goes through chemo.. I mean damn.. I can't imagine that, even at the end of the book in 2014 she's still going through chemo. This woman has the strength of an ox!
So here they all are with a mom that has cancer and a wonderful dad that runs marathons and owns several newspapers around the area. Then one day their healthy dad goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. Thus, the story takes off with the horrific events of having to take care of two terminally ill parents. One destined to die soon, the other that won't let cancer beat her.
I loved Dan's parents, the dad is so sweet and such a calm person. His mom is a tough as nails woman that had me laughing many times with her cussing and yelling at everyone :)
It's up to Dan and his brother Greg to take care of their dad because mom says so.. but later on toward the end they told her he had to have a nurse, so she relented.
I hate to say I enjoyed reading this book because that seems weird, but I don't mean I enjoyed it because it's a memoir of people dying, I enjoyed it because it was about a family that helped each other and excepted each other no matter what they did. They showed love and support for each other even if they bitched and complained about having to do this hard work. They were real.. just being real, but they stuck together. Some more so than others, but I digress.
I hate diseases, I hate people and animal getting diseases. I wish all diseases would just piss off!
September 10, 2015
I don't think I've ever loved a memoir so much, even though, many times throughout the book I really didn't like the author. Ultimately, (no spoilers) I've come to the conclusion that Dan Marshall is a pretty great guy, as well as a brutally honest writer who puts emotion on the page to a level that I've rarely seen.
July 8, 2015
Crude, sloppy, and entertaining. I would have IDOLIZED this book when I was a seventeen-year-old asshole. As a grown-ass woman, the weak writing bothered me a tiny bit. But it was heartfelt and sad and a weird/wonderful story. The love the author has for his father throbs throughout every page. Is that a thing? Throbbing throughout the page? Whatever. I'm a sloppy writer, too. I just don't have a book.
November 16, 2015
A hero of sorts! Seriously. I mean, yes everyone dies. But when it happens to you, especially when someone close to you is going to die and you have an endpoint in sight - say slightly over a year- and it's your parent---dealing with that in your 20's (or any age) is TOUGH and makes you do things that you never thought you would have to do. So when you go from being a complete selfish dick to a slightly less selfish dick, i call that a type of heroism.
Dan Marshall had it all; wealth, a future, a girlfriend, awesome home situation where he was one of 5 kids welcomed home with open arms and a party whenever he went home until the day he got a phone call that said his dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.
And the spoiled little shit had to take the news and rally his brother and sisters and find out what needed to be done because his mom wasn't about to take over because guess what? she's got cancer! Dan's mom has had for a while but she still undergoes treatments and spends an inordinate amount of time on painkillers.
this book should be dry and sad.
And it is sad.
But it's also fucking hilarious because dan is a gifted storyteller when it comes to self-deprecation and raw honesty. He is one of those people who truly tells it like it is. and i can see that some people might be *offended by the language (those people are retarded) but it totally makes the book because if that's how you talk and think then that's the language you use.
Also Dan talks about how he feels and he feels everything from affronted to why this is happening to him? (also selfish) to angry, frustrated, irritated, worried, helpless, bitter, sad and very very drunk. He's self centered but you love him for it because we all are. We just don't like to admit it.
He also has a girlfriend who shows her true colors, like when all the fun trips away and party time is put on hold she bails- (bitch!).
And Dan who just wants to have his family back to where he had it all good learns a thing about what it takes to get his hands dirty and do the work himself. He wants to hire help for his dad as his disease progressed from bad to worse but he didn't. He numbed himself out of his own life and slept walked through care taking his dad and also along with his brother fathered his two younger sisters.
I just loved this book. Couldn't put it down and I even loved the paper it was printed on. Seriously, the hardcover version was printed on this fantastic paper and typeface that you can't get from a kindle. power to the pulp!!
Dan Marshall had it all; wealth, a future, a girlfriend, awesome home situation where he was one of 5 kids welcomed home with open arms and a party whenever he went home until the day he got a phone call that said his dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.
And the spoiled little shit had to take the news and rally his brother and sisters and find out what needed to be done because his mom wasn't about to take over because guess what? she's got cancer! Dan's mom has had for a while but she still undergoes treatments and spends an inordinate amount of time on painkillers.
this book should be dry and sad.
And it is sad.
But it's also fucking hilarious because dan is a gifted storyteller when it comes to self-deprecation and raw honesty. He is one of those people who truly tells it like it is. and i can see that some people might be *offended by the language (those people are retarded) but it totally makes the book because if that's how you talk and think then that's the language you use.
Also Dan talks about how he feels and he feels everything from affronted to why this is happening to him? (also selfish) to angry, frustrated, irritated, worried, helpless, bitter, sad and very very drunk. He's self centered but you love him for it because we all are. We just don't like to admit it.
He also has a girlfriend who shows her true colors, like when all the fun trips away and party time is put on hold she bails- (bitch!).
And Dan who just wants to have his family back to where he had it all good learns a thing about what it takes to get his hands dirty and do the work himself. He wants to hire help for his dad as his disease progressed from bad to worse but he didn't. He numbed himself out of his own life and slept walked through care taking his dad and also along with his brother fathered his two younger sisters.
I just loved this book. Couldn't put it down and I even loved the paper it was printed on. Seriously, the hardcover version was printed on this fantastic paper and typeface that you can't get from a kindle. power to the pulp!!
April 12, 2016
At age 25, Dan Marshall went home to Salt Lake City to care for a father with ALS and a mother with leukemia. He and his four hapless siblings (a Sedaris-like clan) approached caregiving with sarcasm and dirty humor. Gleefully foul-mouthed, his memoir lacks introspective depth. He hardly ventures deeper than initial descriptions like “My gay brother, Greg” and “My adopted Native American sister, Michelle.” And even when his sentiments about his father are sincere, they are conveyed via what sound like clichés: “I wanted my poor dad to get better, not worse.”
That said, this is an enjoyable book with a rollicking pace and, to my surprise, Marshall made me cry in the end. An invented chance at closure was proof to me that he has an eye for fiction – especially when he cuts down on the obscenities. I wonder whether writing his family’s story as a novel would have allowed him to be less self-consciously glib.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
That said, this is an enjoyable book with a rollicking pace and, to my surprise, Marshall made me cry in the end. An invented chance at closure was proof to me that he has an eye for fiction – especially when he cuts down on the obscenities. I wonder whether writing his family’s story as a novel would have allowed him to be less self-consciously glib.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
June 26, 2016
If this were a novel, I would have given it 1 star. Being a memoir, I feel like I can't criticize it just because I hate the characters. Almost everyone in the book feels like a caricature rather than a human.
The family is a group of spoiled, rich, arrogant, foul-mouthed jerks, and seemingly proud of it. They're all rabidly disrespectful toward each other and the world. I hate the way the family treats each other (Mother to children: "God forbid you lazy kids actually do something around here... Your dad doesn't want some ugly aide touching his penis and watching him shit. You kids can do it"). I hate the way the kids apparently don't let their poor dad think of anything other than his disease for even a moment (Author to mother: "I can't go to Chelsea's show, I've got to watch this crippled fuck"). Essentially, they're the sort of people I'd detest in real life, and knowing that that this story is indeed "real life" rather than fiction just made me angry.
The crudity is way overdone, especially in the first part of the book. It felt like a gimmick that's uncomfortable at first, and very soon becomes tiresome, and then just keeps going on and on. Admittedly, I'm not much of a fan of crude humour, but crudity devoid of wit is even worse. The book could have used way more adjectives that actually have semantic meaning instead of expletives, for starters. Like another reviewer noted, adding innumerable "fucks" doesn't add emphasis, or even anger - it's just tedious petulance.
So on the whole, I found this book quite a slog. The last ten pages or so took a wonderful new direction in tone, but I thought it was too little too late.
The family is a group of spoiled, rich, arrogant, foul-mouthed jerks, and seemingly proud of it. They're all rabidly disrespectful toward each other and the world. I hate the way the family treats each other (Mother to children: "God forbid you lazy kids actually do something around here... Your dad doesn't want some ugly aide touching his penis and watching him shit. You kids can do it"). I hate the way the kids apparently don't let their poor dad think of anything other than his disease for even a moment (Author to mother: "I can't go to Chelsea's show, I've got to watch this crippled fuck"). Essentially, they're the sort of people I'd detest in real life, and knowing that that this story is indeed "real life" rather than fiction just made me angry.
The crudity is way overdone, especially in the first part of the book. It felt like a gimmick that's uncomfortable at first, and very soon becomes tiresome, and then just keeps going on and on. Admittedly, I'm not much of a fan of crude humour, but crudity devoid of wit is even worse. The book could have used way more adjectives that actually have semantic meaning instead of expletives, for starters. Like another reviewer noted, adding innumerable "fucks" doesn't add emphasis, or even anger - it's just tedious petulance.
So on the whole, I found this book quite a slog. The last ten pages or so took a wonderful new direction in tone, but I thought it was too little too late.
August 13, 2015
I was so looking forward to this memoir. I was aware there would be a lot of bad language and black humor, but I found the author to be a bozo. While I felt for him--at the age of 25, his dad is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease and his mother is continuing to battle cancer, The author's responses were continually immature and often cringeworthy. I am glad I read the book-- it was like an itch I had to scratch--but be aware this is not your typical memoir.
August 6, 2015
I'm sorry, I just can't. I tried so hard and couldn't finish this book. Listen, I love me some edgy, raunchy, raw, potty-mouthed writing just as much as the next girl (okay, more), but I really couldn't deal with the writing and style of these one. Marshall acknowledges being "a white asshole" but it didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I was learning how shitty ALS is, how cancer literally sucks out your soul but I wasn't getting an authentic sense of who these people really are.
Might try again in a few months--maybe with a finished copy but there are too many other memoirs that are drawing me in right now and I can't keep trying so hard with this one.
Might try again in a few months--maybe with a finished copy but there are too many other memoirs that are drawing me in right now and I can't keep trying so hard with this one.
October 2, 2015
There's something intoxicating about Dan Marshall's voice that makes you unable to put this book down, even as his family's story goes from hilarious to devastating with the turn of a page. Marshall's sharp humor stems from his brutal honesty and his unflinching portrayal of himself and his family as they navigate the uncharted waters of caring for two parents battling terminal illnesses. His family's experiences range from absurd to cringe-inducing (sometimes both), but, remarkably, Marshall always finds a glimmer of humor in a sea of tragedy.
November 10, 2015
A sad memoir of a young man's return to his unconventional family when his father is diagnosed with ALS at the same time that his mother is dealing with cancer. The of the day to day dealings with medical care became repetitive and the constant F-bombs and fart references turned me off.
November 2, 2015
This was AWFUL. Lots of swearing doesn't make you funny or edgy, or a writer. Any comparison to David Sedaris is slander.
February 22, 2016
Having been the primary (read:only) caregiver for my mother in law as she was dying of breast cancer I wholeheartedly give this memoir five stars. One for the bravery it took to publish a very private and horrifying chapter of a family's saga. One for the humor that was not scrubbed clean in an effort to conform to how many people want to believe a family will handle this traumatic series of events. One for the explanation and facts about a disease that were written in such a way that it never felt tedious or textbook-like. One for the time taken to introduce us to each family member and relevant observer (especially Stana), which enabled the book to remain relevant and speak for a group of people rather than becoming indulgent. Finally, and most importantly to me, one for the honesty with which the author writes about how hard it is to learn how to care for someone whose continued existance depends on you and the seemingly stupid mistakes made along the way. I appreciate his willingness to put it all out there; the anger and resentment, fear and self-doubt, the grief of losing someone you love and the relief that follows, spiked with guilt. This memoir was an amazing gift to anyone who has or will face the challenge of helping someone die. I plan on donating my copy to the Hospice that worked with me and my mother in law.
November 13, 2015
The criticisms of this memoir that center around the author's supposed "incompetence" in caring for his dying father seem to come from a place where the reviewer just simply has never cared for someone that is dying. It's imperfect and awful. Or maybe that reviewer is just the one person who is able to get it right while the rest of us just flounder. Whatever was awful about you before the illness is only amplified in hardship. So was Dan an entitled asshole before his dad got sick? Seems so. What did you expect when things got difficult?
Unfortunately, when our parent is dying we are not afforded an automatic character upgrade, supernatural empathy or even any semblance of medical expertise.
God, this life is hard. And there is just so much freedom in identifying in someone's honesty - even if it's ugly and your mom would surely die if she knew you read such profanity.
Unfortunately, when our parent is dying we are not afforded an automatic character upgrade, supernatural empathy or even any semblance of medical expertise.
God, this life is hard. And there is just so much freedom in identifying in someone's honesty - even if it's ugly and your mom would surely die if she knew you read such profanity.
June 26, 2015
This book made me laugh and cry all within 300 pages. One of the best memoirs I've read (not like I've read enough of them, but I did take an undergraduate class on them). From my knowledge and understanding of them, this book took what I knew of a memoir and totally revolutionized what it means. No longer was it a story of a pity party to make other people feel sorry for you; memoirs instead are supposed to inspire emotions in other people, whether they be good or bad. Thanks, Dan Marshall, for teaching me a lesson that I needed to learn through your life story.
February 3, 2017
First off, if you are offended by swearing, don't read this book because there is a ton. What a horrible thing to go through. Dan tells the story of when his Mom was going through cancer treatment and their Dad was diagnosed with ALS and eventually died from the disease. It's a very frank and brutally honest look at how a family copes with two parents dying.
September 2, 2015
I liked this better when it was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
August 31, 2015
Excellent. I laughed a lot. I didn't cry but came close.
Dan made me love this family and want to be a part of it, despite everything.
Dan made me love this family and want to be a part of it, despite everything.
December 10, 2019
Irreverente. Si tuviera que elegir un solo adjetivo para definir esta genialidad de novela, sería ese. El autor se ríe de todo: de la enfermedad, de la muerte, de su familia y de sí mismo. Y lo hace con un estilo que hace que la novela se lea sola (yo lo he hecho en dos noches, del tirón). El tema no puede ser más dramático (tener a sus dos padres enfermos terminales al mismo tiempo y tener que paralizar toda su vida para cuidarlos), pero la novela no es ni mucho menos un drama. Es comedia, es humor negro, es sarcasmo, es crítica y es autocrítica. Me ha maravillado. Una de mis mejores lecturas del año, sin duda, aunque... reconozco que quizá no sea para todo el mundo. Hasta yo, que soy la más bestia del mundo, he dado un respingo en algunos pasajes.
January 14, 2020
Desgarrador, irreverente, impresionable, doloroso, atrevido, desvergonzado, duro, fuerte, tierno. Imprescindible.
Buena traducción.
Buena traducción.
August 15, 2015
I'm a huge fan of memoirs so I was extremely happy that I was able to pick up an ARC at BEA this year. This was the one book that I saw EVERYONE carrying around and reading on day 1, as if they couldn't put it down, and now I understand why.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for the sad, sappy, life stories about losing a loved one. Sometimes you just need to sit down and remember that life is short and all that jazz. But boy oh boy, Marshall takes it to a whole other level that is so honest and raw that I couldn't help but laugh and bawl my eyes out simultaneously. Growing up, I always loved the TV show Roseanne because of how brutally honest it was. It never sugar coated anything and showed what a real American family looked like. Forget The Brady Bunch, the Hucstables (sp?) and the Tanners. The Marshalls is where it's at. No sugar coating, no babying, no happy ending. This was pure heart wrenching emotion put into not so pleasant words. More obscenities than words, but I think that made it better.
At times I did question "my God, how can this family keep talking and acting like this while their father is dying?" but then I realized, the majority of families are probably this way and no one wants to admit it. Everyone wants to be politically correct, except Dan Marshall and I admire him for that.
I truly think that anyone who has dealt with or is dealing with a loved one suffering from ALS, or any terminal disease for that matter, should read this book. I think it could be viewed as an extremely therapeutic, similar to those support groups Bob Marshall enjoyed so much. It offers a sort of relief and reminds those families, you are not alone. Additionally, it reminds people like myself, someone who hasn't experienced a tragedy such as this, that my life isn't so bad no matter how stressed I may be.
I don't know that a book has ever made me cry so much within the last twenty pages (and I've read TFIOS) and I commend Dan Marshall for that. Bravo Danny Boy, bravo.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for the sad, sappy, life stories about losing a loved one. Sometimes you just need to sit down and remember that life is short and all that jazz. But boy oh boy, Marshall takes it to a whole other level that is so honest and raw that I couldn't help but laugh and bawl my eyes out simultaneously. Growing up, I always loved the TV show Roseanne because of how brutally honest it was. It never sugar coated anything and showed what a real American family looked like. Forget The Brady Bunch, the Hucstables (sp?) and the Tanners. The Marshalls is where it's at. No sugar coating, no babying, no happy ending. This was pure heart wrenching emotion put into not so pleasant words. More obscenities than words, but I think that made it better.
At times I did question "my God, how can this family keep talking and acting like this while their father is dying?" but then I realized, the majority of families are probably this way and no one wants to admit it. Everyone wants to be politically correct, except Dan Marshall and I admire him for that.
I truly think that anyone who has dealt with or is dealing with a loved one suffering from ALS, or any terminal disease for that matter, should read this book. I think it could be viewed as an extremely therapeutic, similar to those support groups Bob Marshall enjoyed so much. It offers a sort of relief and reminds those families, you are not alone. Additionally, it reminds people like myself, someone who hasn't experienced a tragedy such as this, that my life isn't so bad no matter how stressed I may be.
I don't know that a book has ever made me cry so much within the last twenty pages (and I've read TFIOS) and I commend Dan Marshall for that. Bravo Danny Boy, bravo.
November 11, 2015
This is the story of a "spoiled, rich, White, asshole" with a filthy mouth (he gets it from his mother), and the year he became a full-time caregiver for his Dad after an ALS diagnosis. And his mom? She was a multiple cancer survivor and had to start another round of chemo right when his dad started a steep decline in functioning. The author doesn't sound like (or write himself like) a nice guy, he's proud to be a potty mouth jerk who would rather say something ignorant and offensive than not do so.
Ignorant and offensive things happen to him too, like his girlfriend of 5 years bailing on him because she can't handle the tragedy of his situation. Even a rich, spoiled jerk like him deserves better than she gives him.
May be triggering for those who have had similar caregiving experiences, the trauma of loss due to chronic illness, or those who are offended by the incessant swearing. It lost 2 stars from me over the swearing.
Ignorant and offensive things happen to him too, like his girlfriend of 5 years bailing on him because she can't handle the tragedy of his situation. Even a rich, spoiled jerk like him deserves better than she gives him.
May be triggering for those who have had similar caregiving experiences, the trauma of loss due to chronic illness, or those who are offended by the incessant swearing. It lost 2 stars from me over the swearing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 15, 2015
Sorry, Dan Marshall. I really wanted to like this book, but the harsh truth is that it's just not very good. I loved the concept of a tragic time in someone's life being treated with warmth and humour, but in practise it's just the same tired toilet jokes being recycled ad nauseam. With the exception of Marshall's long-suffering father, I wanted to strangle everyone in this story at one point or another. This being a true tale, I'm not going to judge a person's approach to personal tragedy, but as a book it didn't work for me at all. I got about three quarters through before I had my "fuck this" moment and gave up. David Sedaris it ain't.
October 30, 2015
I loved this book. I loved everything about it. The humour is extremely dark, wildly inappropriate at times, and completely hilarious. It is a painful subject and difficult to believe it could be dealt with with so much humour but Marshall really pulls it off. This book is definitely not for everyone as I am sure some people would find it offensive but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hands-down the best memoir I have read in years.
June 4, 2015
4.5 stars. This is the most irreverent book I have ever read, and I mean that as a compliment. I think it will be way too crass and caustic for most people, but for the right audience in a similar situation, it could be a lifesaver. Besides David Sedaris, it also had shades of Patton Oswalt, Sean Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of It All, and The Silver Linings Playbook.
September 1, 2015
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
I liked this book, but a bit over the top in when it comes to the crudeness. The experience the family had was tragic and I do understand that gallows humor can sometimes help get you through the agony but that can be offensive to some and as a result limit the audience for the book.
I liked this book, but a bit over the top in when it comes to the crudeness. The experience the family had was tragic and I do understand that gallows humor can sometimes help get you through the agony but that can be offensive to some and as a result limit the audience for the book.
October 27, 2015
Made me laugh, made me cry. A giant lesson in putting on your big girl/boy pants filled with F bombs and inappropriate jokes! Review to come.
November 13, 2015
If you don't think this is funny after the first 15 pages, don't bother reading the rest.
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