Closing Time
A Memoir
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- 49,00 kr
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- 49,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Closing Time recounts Joe Queenan’s Irish Catholic upbringing in a family dominated by his erratic father, a violent yet oddly charming emotional terrorist whose alcoholism fuels a limitless torrent of self-pity, railing, destruction, and late-night chats with the Lord Himself. With the help of a series of mentors and surrogate fathers, and armed with his own furious love of books and music, Joe begins the long flight away from the dismal confines of his neighbourhood – with a brief misbegotten stop at a seminary – and into the wider world.
Closing Time is an unforgettable account of the damage done to children by parents without futures and of the grace children find to move beyond these experiences.
‘Closing Time is unmistakably a tale of triumph, vindication and revenge . . . [an] enlightening account of the ways in which we are all, to some extent, casualties of our own childhoods.’ Sarah Churchwell, Guardian
‘A brutally executed coming-of-age story’ Esquire
‘Will have readers crying tears of both sorrow and hilarity’ Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Humorist and pop culture writer Queenan (Queenan Country) turns the mirror on himself in this somber and funny memoir about life with father in the projects of Philadelphia. Queenan closes the chapter on his life with a verbally and physically abusive alcoholic father. Queenan's father was a pugnacious drunk who declaimed passages from great literature and often chatted loudly late at night with God. Early in the memoir, Queenan expresses the searingly honest sentiment that becomes the refrain of the book: "I never forgave my father for the way he treated us." Queenan spent most of his life trying to get away from this father; he found refuge in the public library, and for at least a year ran off to a seminary with the intention of joining the priesthood. After his father's death, as he was casting about for some way to put a spin on their relationship, Queenan recalls that acting as a stenographer for his father who in his drunken rages would reel off letters to the editor about various social injustices was the moment when the thought of making a living as a writer first entered his head. Unsentimental and brutally honest, Queenan's memoir captures the pathos of growing up in a difficult family and somehow getting beyond it.
