Award-winning poet/author Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) uses his daughter's imminent birth as a springboard to examine personal and political shakiness. Flynn jumps back and forth in covering his rocky childhood (his parents: a distraught, hard-living single mother; an ex-con, mentally wrecked father who was largely absent from Flynn's childhood), his struggles with women and sobriety, and adjusting to his daughter's arrival. Throughout this swirl of heartache and introspection, Flynn becomes obsessed with torture and America's acceptance of it after the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib are released. It's clear that Flynn is lost in his own life, and that he needs to find himself, or at least some stability, not just for his daughter's benefit but for his own. The accompanying narrative structure may isolate those who prefer a more straight-ahead style—the poetic interludes and scattered focus are sometimes more distracting than artistic—but Flynn's life is so volcanic and his writing style so kinetic and punchy that others will be drawn into this gripping personal narrative. (Jan.)
Memoir as meditation on love and loss, birth and death, good and evil, from PEN Award winner Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, 2005, etc.). In 2007, as the author awaited the birth of his daughter, he became obsessed with the stories of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He felt that his daughter was only as real as the sonogram images of her, the tortured only as real as the now infamous photos of their naked bodies mired in humiliation and pain. This would change. Maeve Lulu was born, and Flynn traveled to Istanbul to witness the testimonies of ex-detainees of Abu Ghraib. Between his daughter's imminent birth and his confrontation with the tortured, Flynn became lost-"Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point"-and, above all, bewildered-"bewilderment of waking up, my hand on Inez's belly, as the fine points of waterboarding are debated on public radio." His only way back was to remember, and so he wrote of memories-some long ago, some fresh wounds, some clear in their meaning, some as elusive as wind. Some memories led to other memories, while others stood alone. He remembered a mother who committed suicide at age 42, a father who was lost to alcohol and then prison at 45, returning to Flynn's life a ruined man in need of care. He remembered lovers he could not love and feared that when Maeve was born, "I will look at her and not feel a thing." The author summoned the image of the dragon in Paradise Lost and wondered if it might consume him, the torturers he hates, or both. Flynn recalls and records in a stunningly beautiful cascade of images. In the end, he realizes that only love was real: "The only miracle is now. Lulu is the only miracle."And that was enough. A striking collection of memories that will mystify, enlighten, trouble and amaze. Author tour to New York, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles
"A gleaming, brutal, beautiful book. As I read it, I kept thinking of all the people I wanted to give it to."
"Another Nick Flynn book means another marvel. The Ticking is the Bomb is bold and brave and the prose will blow you away, as well his insights on love and being. Behold."
"A writer of uncommon thoughtful eloquence...If the battered genre of memoir is ever to regain its luster and intention, its rightful heritage of memory and impression, then Flynn is one of its most passionate and skilled advocates."
San Francisco Chronicle - Susanna Sonnenberg
"The best passages here are simply astonishing...The questions Flynn asks in this disquieting masterpiece are quite simple: How could we, as a people, have allowed this to have happened? And why are we still?"
Los Angeles Times - Steve Almond
"[Flynn's] efforts to reconcile the tattered pieces of his life—his determination to find love and redemption in a world gone mad—feel gutsy, hard won, and utterly true."
"Reading this book is like experiencing a very skilled surgeon performing an operation on his own insecurities and new found fragile maturity. The written operation may be painful but watching the scars heal on the page is a true delight."
"[A] finely crafted mosaic of edgy beauty, ambushing drama, and unsparing reflections…. Haunted, compassionate, fearful of failing as a parent, Flynn pursues the deeply disturbing subject of torture into unexpected spheres, seeking understanding of our obsession with power, acceptance of suffering, and transcendent resilience."
"[Flynn's] search for the meaning of fatherhood in the era of terror is remarkable not only for the nimbleness with which he pulls these threads together—observations of former prisoners are woven with meditations on loss—but also for its empathy and unshrinking honesty."
Vanity Fair - Elissa Schappell
Poet/playwright Flynn (www.nickflynn.org) follows up his first memoir, the New York Times best-selling PEN/Martha Albrand Award winner Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), with this spiraling inner monolog about being a father and being fathered into a brutal world. Though this work may challenge some listeners with its jumps in chronology and anxiety-laden prose style, reader Scott Brick (see Behind the Mike, LJ 10/15/09) does a marvelous job of maneuvering through the narrative's various parts, keeping his delivery rhythmically consistent while simultaneously projecting the right amount of emphasis and emotion. Brick's performance will hold listeners' attention long enough for them to enjoy and adapt fully to Flynn's unconventional work. For those liking experimental nonfiction, memoirs, and political reflections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/09.—Ed.]—Lance Eaton, Peabody, MA
