Beamish Boy (I Am Not My Story): A Memoir of Recovery & Awakening
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- € 3,99
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"I was raised in a clock tower with bats in the belfry." So begins, "Beamish Boy," the harrowing account of Albert Flynn DeSilver's inspirational journey from suicidal alcoholic to Poet Laureate and beyond. Though growing up in material privilege in suburban Connecticut in the 1970's and 80's, Albert finds himself whirling through an emotional wasteland void of love, complicated by his mostly absent alcoholic mother, while being raised by a violent Swiss-German governess. A dramatic downgrade in lifestyle right at adolescence inspires a hasty attraction to alcohol, drugs, and a series of increasingly shocking adventures.
Filled with a luminous cast of characters, and told with searing honesty and ironic wit, "Beamish Boy" is a redemptive story of survival and letting go, as we follow Albert from one zany adventure and near-death experience to the next. He is run over by his best friend after blacking out in a driveway, contracts malaria in east Africa, and joins a psychedelic "therapy" cult, until he miraculously finds himself, through photography, poetry, and a hilarious awakening at a meditation retreat center, realizing finally, what it means to be fully alive and to truly love.
"Beamish Boy" charts a compelling spiritual journey, from violence and self-annihilation to creativity and self-realization. Not your typical addiction memoir, "Beamish Boy" reads more like a witty and poetic novel, offering a profound window into the human condition, complete with its tragedies and ecstasies—illuminating one man's quest for lasting wisdom.
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After six years of sobriety, poet DeSilver admits he was "still one sip of beer away from hell." After 10 years of sobriety, he writes that he wanted to kill the "drunk, stupid and confused" boy he had been at age 19. The emotional force of DeSilver's memoir lies in the author's ability to record raw and painful memories of addiction, while also reflecting on turning points that lead him to form a new identity. Skirting a fine line between acceptance and blame, he describes the eccentric characters implicated in his downward spiral (e.g., his gin-swilling, cigarette-smoking mother, whose pretentions were matched by her fondness for profanity; a devil of a German governess reminiscent of a Roald Dahl villain; a renegade high school teacher who supplied students with alcohol and cocaine), as well as the heroes who helped save him: a wise prostitute in Nairobi, photo-historian Arlan Silverman, American Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, and Indian spiritual leader Nisargadatta Maharaj. DeSilver's seesawing journey from drug and alcohol addiction to recovery all filled with epiphanies and backsliding, clarity and bewilderment will keep readers committed to his story until, at last, he learns to "beam" without self-destructing and finds peace and stability in a loving relationship and meditation.
