I'm Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss

by Joseph Lezza

★★★★★ “A standout piece of work. This is tough and true and so well considered. A magnificent achievement.” Russell T. Davies, award-winning writer and creator of Queer as Folk and Doctor Who

In I'm Never Fine, a collage memoir of essays and poetry, Joseph Lezza shouts in the dark from the backseat of a stranger’s car, a ditch on the Italian coast, a forest outside the arctic, and from the bottom of a shaving cream can.

When Joseph caught himself wishing necrotizing skin infections upon unhurried retirees in the self checkout lane, and fantasized about loud-talking commuters making quick friends with the underside of a steamroller, he began to wonder if he was fine.

Of all the things Joseph Lezza could have been, he certainly wasn't fine.

The “fine” he’d adopted watching his father succumb to cancer was beginning to wane. It could no longer be used as a shield to melt the face off of anyone who dared inquire. All the “fines” prophesized in every article, every book, and every inspirational meme—courtesy of every armchair expert with a pulse and internet connection—had lost their value.

When Joseph realized he was facing a future that would find him standing over the carcass of an overzealous Costco greeter, one thing became moving on required looking back.

This memoir is an autopsy of perceived missteps, a conclusion to unfinished conversations, and a reframing of flawed judgments through the eyes of a young man in search of a feeling. Search for that feeling with Joseph Lezza in I'm Never Fine.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Adult

Kindle Edition

Published February 21, 2023

Reviews

[Marleigh McFarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start this off by saying I am honored that I was able to read this beautiful masterpiece before release day. Lezzas words really let marks on me, his explanation of grief and his journey through the loss of his dad was heartbreaking and magnificent. I loved the preface of this book and it really set me up for loving this book, I really enjoyed lezzas sense of humor even while speaking on some of the hardest moments of his life. An absolutely breathtaking piece that I would recommend to everyone. Expect to let a few tears go because I thinks it’s impossible to read this and not want to cry. I have not lost a parent but I felt that I could relate to all of his aspects of grief that he went through which really made this book for me.

[Josiah Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s sad how slow I’ve been slugging through books lately, but if there’s a book I’ve read in the last few months that was always a pleasure to sit with and indulge in, it’s this one.
I’ve haven’t lost my father, and I’m fortunate to say Cancer has only come as close to my family as a friend of a friend, but I have lost people, and Joseph speaks to grief in a way that’s so complex and honest, I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time comin’

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

THERE WILL BE TEARS.

Joseph Lezza invites us into his close-knit family through a series of smart, funny, and heartbreaking essays and poems. In language both earthy and ethereal, he paints a portrait of his father, the true family man, boundless in his devotion and unashamed in his affections. But this is a memoir of loss, and Lezza captures it in painstaking detail.

Though I have not suffered the loss of a parent, I related strongly to his experience with grief - a fight for meaning and dignity between the mundane and the absurd. It’s just truly a stunning piece of work thanks to the author’s vulnerability and fearlessness.

But there are plenty of laughs too. I literally laughed out loud at lines like “the mouthful of teeth so white and straight they’d vote down-ballot Republican” and “I drive the point home, mostly because the point is drunk.” I read this book in 2 days. I couldn’t put it down. Now do yourself a favor and pick it up.

[Kathleen Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Lezza’s memoir is a gorgeously written smorgasbord of feelings. All the emotion groups are represented, some of which are: pain, humor, heartbreak, fear and hope. It’s raw and challenging to read because of that, and it’s impossible to put down. You hear, see and feel the poet in him, as well as the smart and funny old soul in the guise of a young man.

Even in the sharp specificity of his father’s dying of cancer, the central thread connecting these chapters, Lezza provides universal tenets and common experiences. “As close to mortality as this affliction delivers us,” he writes, “it has a distinct knack for blinding us to what makes us mortal.” We learn about his relationship with his father as seen through the loss of that significant person. We learn bits and pieces about his father – immigrant, veteran, a seaside lover and a steak lover to name only a few salient traits – and his relationship with him, but most of the time we travel with Joseph through the horrors of terminal illness and “the host of tiny atrocities that occur as part of the fallout.” We learn about the author’s admirable ability to render pain into beauty, and as in any good storytelling and character depiction, we learn a thing or two about ourselves.

I both want to warn readers – especially those recently bereaved – about the tender pulse points and to push them toward it for a healing commiseration they perhaps can’t find with people they know in their own lives. Everyone is different and needs something particular, even if they’re not sure what that is. I am leaning in the direction of: “Read it. Now.” Lezza’s sense of humor, I suspect, is part of his own coping, but it is generous to the reader as well, abating the radiating sting of reality just a little bit. “Cancer can be funny and needs to be funny in order to cut the despair,” he writes. “Along the way, it tries to kill us a thousand times, in every conceivable fashion. It turns men into monsters, makes balloon animals of their bowels, impersonates infection so as to choke the insides, and manages to steal from the vault for good measure. It is Elizabethan drama, bedroom farce, and murder mystery all at once.”

Lezza provides other respites and side trips – vignettes of his own coming of age, growing up Catholic, his parents’ reactions to learning he’s gay, his healing journey to Finland. The latter helped me finally understand why I welcome punishing cold wind when I’m deeply upset about something. Of the numbing Scandinavian temperatures, he writes, “For someone who’s never known an unmagnified feeling, the chance to feel nothing is positively alluring.”

In the titular chapter, “I’m never fine,” Lezza deconstructs the utility and essence of that common response – “the Swiss army knife of words” – to that common question we ask and are asked dozens of time each day. It’s not as simple as just a way to get out of a conversation, making it easier for both parties, or a palatable white lie to cover up the volcanic truth. When Lezza decided to use the word “fine” to answer the onslaught of inquiries about his well-being, he discovered that “… it injected the right amount of menthol and honey for someone to suck on, soothing their burning curiosity without coming on too strong.”

There is a strong sense of loneliness throughout, as grief brings even if the griever is surrounded by a crush of loving friends and family. This makes the intimacy between reader and writer more profound. Because we travel vicariously with Lezza to hell and back out again, he earns our trust – while entertaining and beguiling us, even under a heavy weight – so that by the time he shares what he’s gained from the loss, we are open to believing him when he offers several beautifully sculpted totems of hard-won hope. The one I take most to heart goes like this: “[R]emember the last time things felt as hopeless as they might in this very moment. Then remember how it only became a memory because, in order to do so, it must—in some way—come to an end.”

The essays that comprise this memoir can stand and have stood alone, but they work together in a way that mimics the grieving process – one long journey, along which one experiences a thousand various tones, emotions and perspectives. I’ll repeat my recommendation from above: Read it. Now.

[Ari Lohr · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is always something challenging about balancing the grand and the banal. i feel as if many memoirs fall into the trap of coming across as too dramatic, too 'literary', to feel believable. yet correspondingly, authors which merely recount shopping lists of random events risk alienating the reader just as much as if they overused flowery language, convoluted metaphors, the proverbial thesaurus.com.

and so what i appreciate most about lezza's collection is how he cleverly weaves together isolated, slice-of-life snapshots from his life into a "commotion" that is "easy" for us to "buy into," yet is nonetheless wholly unique, personalized to an individual who, above all else, has lived a rich and vibrant life.

lezza's prose has the vibrancy of youth and the sophistication of age; the cheerful whimsy of life and the solemn poise of death. hence, this book is one of juxtapositions: it is literary, it is laden with meaning, and yet it is utterly intimate, relentlessly matter-of-fact. it is poetic, yes, yet it is also raw, and vivid, not just in its language but in the sheer closeness lezza has with the experiences which he so expertly recounts and confounds on the page. just as in lezza's life, i was constantly strung along by this book, hanging on its every word as i was compelled simply to follow it wherever it went. i'm inspired by this book, and by lezza's handling of it, both as a collection of fragmented memories as well as a cohesive, stunning, and real explication of nothing but what it means to be.

[Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I really liked the book. The artistry of the author’s words is beautiful. Who knew an entire chapter on shaving a face could be so beautifully painful?

However as the book went on it went from poetic to almost too wordy.

I will say, however, my favorite quote was:

“Now remember the last time things felt as hopeless as they might in this very moment. Then remember how it only became a memory because in order to do so, it must - in some way - come to an end.”

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

If grief was as clinically decipherable and episodically predictable as the professional caring industry often maintains, Joseph Lezza likely wouldn’t have written I’M NEVER FINE --- or, if he did, it would be a very different and much less compelling book.

But grief is a consummate and wily trickster. No matter how commonly its symptoms seem to manifest among us, it simply refuses to play by any logical rules of engagement. As happens over and over again in I’M NEVER FINE, just when it seems Lezza reaches a tenuous grasp of how past, present or impending loss could unbalance his life, it blindsides him with seemingly unrelated emotions, appetites, anxieties and obsessions.

This, in a nutshell, is what Lezza went through in a tumultuous time of his young adult life, leading up to and following his father’s cruelly premature death from pancreatic cancer. It’s a story that continues to this day, because “fine” is an uncontrollable and unbiddable state of being. That’s why the book’s title essay, “I’m Never Fine” (which comes near the end but also would make an excellent conclusion), sums up so much of what is wrong with how our current lifestyle treats grief and the immense pressure we are constantly under to always be “fine.”

Thinly masking itself as anger, outrage, anxiety, despair, depression, fatigue, cynicism, addiction, paranoia, eroticism, narcissism and any number of other distracting and uninvited traits, grief forced itself through every layer of defense Lezza tried (both consciously and otherwise) to pile on against it. To his credit as an author, he let it take him to internal places where most of us would not volunteer to go, even years after catastrophic personal losses. And it’s that working recognition of vulnerability that emerges in some of his most memorable reflections.

One of the few non-surprises in I’M NEVER FINE is how early in this combined memoir-anthology Lezza comes into hard adversarial contact with Western cultural conventions demanding that grief be kept in its place, emotionally tamped down and “gotten over.”

We’ve all encountered those commercial sympathy card truisms about moving on, cherishing good memories, letting go and the like. But I’ve yet to see a card urging the grieving recipient to scream his or her lungs out at whatever passes for God, and the unfairness of it all. Lezza screamed inside his car in hospital parking lots, because it had to be done, and he had to maintain an expected frozen stoicism when watching his mother weep in public across a restaurant table.

That, to a great extent, is the raison d'être of I’M NEVER FINE. Grief the trickster plays with us, seems to distort us into monstrous aberrations of ourselves, and gets us into trouble with everyone and everything “normal” around us. But in doing so it teaches us in its scary, spasmodic way how to express who we really are in a world where everything else, even true emotion, has become commodified and limited.

By giving himself permission (sometimes retrospectively) to go ape-sh*t when things were overwhelming, Lezza became/is becoming a spiritually richer human being.

You see this enrichment suddenly well up within the book as he lovingly chronicles the most mundane and unspectacular events, such as the task of shaving his dying father for the last time, turning every step into a reverent liturgical rite. It’s just one of many vignettes in which grief dials back the trickster and permits glimpses of peace and fulfillment that stand undiluted on their own.

Lezza’s adventures with grief take him to geographically distant places as well, notably Norway, where the emotional culture may seem flat but has in fact been tempered into grace by a history of hard-fought adaptation to darkness and cold. Having traveled a similar itinerary in that amazing country, I can affirm that Lezza nails the Norwegian psyche perfectly; it gave him an unselfconscious space in which to feel.

Travels in his ancestral home of Italy also opened new vistas of memory that intersect with grief in unexpected ways. Because I’M NEVER FINE branches off into various tributaries and detours of experience, the idea of grief as a moveable feast suddenly makes perfect sense. We may think we’re grieving a specific loss, whether of a parent, life partner, sibling, close friend or even a beloved companion animal. But we’re also grieving parts of ourselves that once were, or never came to be.

As Lezza paints it in prose ranging from visceral and outrageous to hauntingly gentle, grief is anything but a stand-alone experience. It’s always there --- not so much the threat lying in theatrical ambush around the next corner, but the accumulation of our many imperfect life experiences, the regrets that nevertheless teach and illuminate, the pains that allow pleasure without guilt, and the fears whose worst realities are in fact survivable.

We deny grief, trickster that it is, at our peril. By disallowing its nightmare clusters and storms of mania and desperation to have their way with us, we become less grounded, less connected and ultimately less human. In its wide emotional amplitude and stark dissection of physical realities, I’M NEVER FINE counters with pathos, vulnerability and a tender germ of healing that starts its growth when we’re least aware of it happening.

Reviewed by Pauline Finch

[Ann Epstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tribute and Tirade – Joseph Lezza’s I’m Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss is a moving tribute to his late father, whose death from pancreatic cancer left his son bereft. It is also a tirade against the unjust and untimely death of a generous man on the cusp of finally enjoying the fruits of a hard-working life. Lezza struggles with his identity as a gay man, raised by devout parents in a Catholic Church that condemned who and what he was. An only child, the beneficiary of his parents’ unstinting love, Lezza was filled with guilt and remorse for having disappointed them. Reading about his journey from self-abasement to self-acceptance is painful, but ultimately redeeming. As a writer myself (see my Goodreads author page https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...), I was impressed by Lezza’s agility with language. His lesson on the meaning of “fine” (adjective, verb, and noun), rooted in the Latin “finis” or end, is a masterful discourse on its ambiguity; it can describe a state ranging from superb to barely tolerable, from being done with grief to utterly and finally dead to the world, like his father. Likewise, Lezza’s description of his reawakening is simultaneously surreal and wholly authentic. As an end-of-life doula, I value his unsparing description of dying, a process that can literally and figuratively strip away our humanity — unless we transform it. Lezza and his mother, backed by family, friends, and hospice, never let the ravages of cancer deprive a brave man of the dignity and adoration he deserves. Lezza’s ferocious yet funny memoir restores justice to his father and rewards his own talents as a writer.

[Caroline Sucharski · Rating 5 out of 5]

“How helpful it would have been, I wonder, to have shared in a journey that more closely mirrored my own…”

As soon as I read the first page, my heart sank. This is a memoir about pain and death— am I prepared to dive into someone else’s story of grief? Within moments, “I’m Never Fine” felt like I was sitting at lunch, having a chat with an old friend. Author Joseph Lezza is not afraid to be painfully honest and vulnerable, creating this intimate environment to explore cancer through the eyes of a young person. Within this collection of short stories and poems, Lezza’s writing style brings humanity to the page— containing a balance of humor while also not shying away from the reality of their emotions.

Throughout the entire memoir I kept saying to myself— ‘How lucky are we to be given a window into Lezza’s story, to feel so close to their experience and comforted by the connection they built through their writing.’ I could not recommend this book more to my fellow readers. Thank you for sharing your story Joseph, and giving as the space to say we are getting better, but “are never fine.”

[Ginath13 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so grateful to BookSirens for giving me the opportunity to read the advanced review copy of I'm Never Fine by Joseph Lezza. I requested a copy after reading a synopsis of the book and finding something I could relate to, a father who fought the cancer battle and lost, leaving behind their only child to figure out how to begin to cope.
Lezza's insights are profoundly moving and his writing is beautiful. The first two thirds of the book, I admit, were incredibly painful to get through, especially if you have gone through a similar life experience. From his father's diagnosis, prognosis, and inevitably to palliative care and hospice, Lezza's detailed descriptions don't hold back and are medically spot on.
By the last third of the book, now dry eyed, I found myself hopeful as the author grapples with issues regarding religion, his sexuality, and his extended family, there were even a few laugh out loud moments. What started off as a painful read left me feeling cathartic and with a strong desire to visit Oslo.

[Jessica Granger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lezza’s I’m Never Fine is a standout piece of literature that allows you to get lost in the beauty of the human experience. The death of his loving father is a shout that echoes throughout the pages. Somewhere in the middle of his father’s illness, I began to grieve never having a father. Joe gave me that. He gave me the father I never had, even though the tale came at the end of a life well loved. This author’s presence is strikingly queer and relevant. His stories parallel a lot of our own. And he doesn’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, his brutally honest depiction of the intersections between family, religion, and toxic cultural norms is where the genius lies dormant, buzzing with energy, and ready to pounce on your psyche the second you turn your back on his words.

[Calvin Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some essays were so visceral, I had to put the book down. But this is a *huge* compliment.

In one essay, Joe uses The Oregon Trail (remember that game?!) as the vehicle for describing how he and his parents weathered a pretty big storm that hit New Jersey. This was definitely a standout story for me because it was so vividly written that I could picture everything taking place.

If you’re in the mood for heart wrenching writing that also has a bit of humor woven into it…this is the book for you.

[Rob Yeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You are not special" the author begins; not as an insult, but as a reassurance that if you squint past the details, the human experience is a universal one.

The memoir centres around his father's battle with cancer and the maestrom it creates within his family. This isn't a heartwarming triumph over adversity, it's a warts-and-all painting of pain, grief, anger, but ultimately love that steels you to keep fighting - first for your loved ones but ultimately yourself.

The writing is raw, intimate and deeply moving, a perfect tonic for the heartbroken.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lezza has such an incredible way of sharing his journey of grief with you. At moments, I cried so hard reading I had to step away to process things of my own that I hadn’t recognized until reading Lezza’s words examining his own life. A beautiful and incredible journey of pain and growth has been shared with us in “I’m Never Fine”. Thrilled to have received an ARC for this- can’t wait to see more from Joseph Lezza.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a powerful collection. If these essays are sometimes of varying quality, they are all deeply felt and often deeply insightful. The titular essay "I'm never fine" is phenomenal, and worth the price of the collection itself. I'll try to avoid being fine, myself.

I didn't feel a need for the final essay, and would've been more than content to end with "I'm never fine." But of course mileage will vary.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Lezza artfully balances a tightrope between comedy and tragedy in this collection of essays. As he reflects on the loss of his father, he illustrates a playful, yet poignant, look on the many faces of grief and illuminates the humor in life’s darkest moments. A must-read for those attempting to navigate their path through loss.

[Phillip Steagall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grief is different for every person and Joseph shares his journey of grief from losing his father with such candor and heart. He doesn’t sugarcoat the journey or the pain but he also wasn’t afraid to find humor where you’d expect there to be none. I cried, I laughed, I looked up flights to Oslo…it was a momentous read and I’m glad he shared it with all of us.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a ARC free from Book Sirens and this is my voluntary honest review.
Wow!
Grief! Pain! Loss!
Masterful!
A page turner!
Don't miss!

[Maria Lezza · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story is captivating. The reader is immediately drawn into the discourse and family dynamics. It pulls one’s heart strings. It is truly a great read!

[Kymberli Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I'm Never Fine" is a beautifully written book, primarily about grief. While I could not relate to the specifics, having had no relationship with my parents, it was easy to completely understand the emotional roller coaster Joseph Lezza describes. I absolutely loved the chapter on the word "fine" and our society's use of that throw-away. I would have enjoyed more chapters with this same approach, as it was brilliant, in my opinion. Some of the book was, for me, a little difficult to follow because of the extensive verbiage; however, it did not change my opinion. I did skim through several pages because of this. One area I thought could be improved or expanded is the short section in which the author defines his sexuality. I don't mean go into greater detail, but as this is billed as LGBTQ+ literature, the one brief section did not add to the narrative. It seemed thrown in, almost as if the thought was "I need to get this in here" without real relevance.

Overall, I enjoyed "I'm Never Fine" and hope to see more from this author. Thank you to BookSirens and Vine Leaves Press for the ARC, for which I am leaving this voluntary review.

[Catherine Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading memoirs and Joe Lezza's story did not disappoint. His honest approach to sharing a story about grief is what makes this memoir so relatable. Each essay tackles an aspect of the grieving process. The blend of adversity and dark humor kept my interest. I highly recommend I'm Never Fine.

[RP · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, detailed account of sickness and grief, and the complexity of the parent/queer child relationship. This is a work of uneasy and poetic truth-telling. It's also funny and full of love.