Given this sureness, then, the conclusion of his story is an unexpected one as Queenan breaks free during his college years and spends much of his adult life having nothing whatever to do with his father – until he learns that the man id dying. It is one of several lines of this kind and typical of the author’s unflinching approach to all things.īroadening it out, to say that he is disdainful of the idea of alcoholism as a disease for which no one can be blamed would be to put it mildly. Recalling an incident where the man once passed out on the living room floor, he states: “We left him there, face down, all night, hoping that he might suffocate on his own vomit. Queenan is never reticent in setting out exactly how he and his siblings felt about their drunk father. His time at the seminary is cut short when he is forced to admit that he will never make a man of the cloth and he throws himself into sports, study and music, all as a means of distancing himself from the armchair monster. The fact that he is also an excellent writer helps too.ĭaddy dearest is present on every page, with Queenan relating almost every action and thought he ever had while growing up to the dynamics of this relationship.Ī succession of uncles and employers (even dead ones) are seconded as surrogate father figures and a spell in junior seminary – “military school for soldiers of Christ” – is primarily a means of getting out of the house.
Thankfully, however, Queenan appears uninterested in courting backslaps and hugs and his story is admirably free of whining self-pity. The self-indulgent, woe-is-me misery memoir is not a genre I tend to have much time for. With Queenan senior a man who “got broken when he was young and never got fixed”, the title of his son’s autobiography clearly suggests an attempt at a real psychological closure – and to this end no demon is left unfaced within its pages. Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1950s and 60s, Queenan and his sisters had to cope not only with poverty but also an “emotionally inert” mother and alcoholic father. Intelligent and articulate, his path to success was far from easy though. TODAY the author of this memoir is a highly successful freelance writer and cultural commentator whose work appears regularly in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and who, on this side of the pond, has contributed to a number of highbrow arts programmes.
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