Closing Time: A Memoir

This book only had one rating and it was just 2 stars. This is an amazing book. It is sharp, funny, sad and so acute in its description of growing up poor. The author and his sibs were abused by a drunk father and an indifferent mother. He doesn't whine, he tells about his way of surviving.

bright witty "only son" of an ignorant alcoholic father and detached mother //
at an early age has to learn to see and navigate the world on his own terms //
tells his angry story in a charming and eager to please style //


in time he comes to forgive himself that he could not "make it right" in his family //
his most enduring achievement is the life and wife and career he is able to put together //
his father remains a distant monster however until shortly before his cancer death //


? do you have a difficult relationship with your father ? //
? do you now live a life "miles and miles" away from your childhood ? //
? do you enjoy the intersection of insight and anger and humor ? //


if so this book would be a good choice //
quibbles about syntax and adjectives seem trite //
this is a good audio book and i'm glad i picked it //

There are aspects of this book that are compelling, mostly the beginning where, as another reviewer points out, we are taken into the grimier corners of Philadelphia and the home of a kid with a loathsome drunk of a father.

There was a sense, to me, of the author standing back at some distant, safe remove, telling us what happened instead of showing us, unlike the Glass Castle (a much more moving memoir), which carried the reader right there along with the author every step of the way.

To be honest, I fell asleep before the end, and I couldn't be bothered to go back for the last hour to hear how it all finally turns out, in part because once our hero is an adult, his story loses interest for me. In much larger part, though, I could not stand the narrator for another minute. His voice is good, but I had the definite feeling that he had not taken the time to read the book once through before going live, so to speak, and I find that irritating. Also, he mispronounces a lot of words, which is a constant refrain of mine. WHY are the publishers so unconcerned about this?!

Joe Queenan's lifelong struggle with the demons of his father's alcoholism makes for fascinating listening. I really love this writer. Unfortunately, this book needs heavy editing. There are hundreds if not thousands of trite phrases. Things stink to high heaven. People are mad as hatters. Queenan's attempt here to exercise his powers as a writer results in an overwriting that is undermined by his curious reluctance to strike out cliches.