This Isn't Going to End Well
The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In this powerful memoir, the bestselling author of Big Fish tries to come to terms with the life and death of his multi-talented longtime friend and brother-in-law, who had been his biggest hero and inspiration, in a poignant, lyrical, and moving memoir.
If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, he had one hero and inspiration for so much of what followed: his longtime friend and brother-in-law William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one, an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook, William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate.
But when William took his own life at age 48, Daniel was left first grieving, and then furious with the man who broke his and his sister’s hearts. That anger led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a dark path into the tortured recesses of William’s past. Eventually, a new picture of William emerged, of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear.
This Isn’t Going to End Well is Daniel Wallace’s first foray into nonfiction. Part love story, part true crime, part a desperate search for the self and how little we really can know another, This Isn’t Going to End Well tells an intimate and moving story of what happens when we realize our heroes are human.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This deeply candid memoir from the author of the best-selling novel Big Fish deals with how we rebuild our life after loss in a unique, powerful way. Daniel Wallace was 12 when he first glimpsed his 18-year-old future brother-in-law William, as he dove off the roof of the Wallace home into the swimming pool. Right then and there, Wallace knew he wanted to be just like William—who went on to become a paramedic, a cartoonist, a drummer, an expert kayaker, and a tender caretaker of Daniel’s physically debilitated sister. But this same talented figure whom we found so compelling to read about was also tormented by addiction and self-doubt, leading him to die by suicide at the age of 48. Fearlessly examining his own weaknesses and anxieties, Wallace uses This Isn’t Going to End Well to work through his doubts and grief. It’s a book that lingers long after it’s over.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Wallace (Big Fish) pays loving tribute to his late brother-in-law, William Nealy, in this deeply felt memoir. When Wallace was 13, his older sister brought her daredevil 20-year-old boyfriend home to meet the family. From that day, the two men formed a friendship that endured until Nealy's suicide at age 48. "William was more alive than I was or would ever be. He flew, and I, who couldn't, just watched," Wallace writes of their dynamic. Throughout, he speaks admiringly of his brother-in-law's "adventurous teenager" spirit, and how he led the author on kayaking trips, fossil hunts, and ill-advised jumps into his in-laws' pool from the roof of their house. Various vignettes focus on Nealy's connection to his family, as when he took a teenage Wallace to his first concert (Alice Cooper) or tenderly cared for Wallace's sister when she was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis at age 21. Reading Nealy's journals after his death, Wallace comes to understand the depths of his brother-in-law's pain, calling the writings "the longest suicide note in the history of the world." Punctuated by Nealy's captivating line drawings, Wallace's elegiac narrative shimmers with deep admiration for a man who always played by his own rules and stood by the people he loved. This will entrance readers from the first page.
