"Another Bullshit Night In Suck City" by Nick Flynn

After nearly 3 months, I just finished "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" by Nick Flynn. I picked up the book because a friend said the main character was so similar to mine in that he was a social worker and aspiring poet in the book. Of course, the main character also has a homeless, alcoholic father in the book, while my dad is sober as can be, but it still made me want to read the book.

Anyway, although I've read few memoirs in my life, "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" is right up there with the best memoirs I've read. The language one-- Flynn has a poet's touch to prose, which is rarely found in most fiction-- is beautiful. Flynn also manages to keep just the right tone throughout; it's never maudlin, when it could have easily been when discussing his mother and father, but it's not cold either. It's the tone of the observer, watching his past life unfold in almost disbelief in the present act of writing.

Flynn's father, Jonathan Flynn, is hardly a likable man. He abandons Nick and his brothers at a very early age, he's an alcoholic, a liar, a criminal and more. And while some of the author's dislike permeates the early pages of the book, you get the sense, as the book comes to a close, that Flynn finally begins to humanize his own father, sees him for the flawed man he is, and is finally able to move on from the pains of the past. The ending, while I don't want to give it away, is a beautiful, perfectly understated and shows us that Flynn, despite it all feels sorry for his father and loves him. It makes both of them unabashedly human and alive to the reader...

Grade: A-