Memories from a Sinking Ship: A Novel [Hardcover]

Barry Gifford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2007 | ISBN-10: 1583227628 | ISBN-13: 978-1583227626

Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Memories from a Sinking Ship travels the landscape of a turbulent world seen through a boy’s steady gaze. Like Twain’s Mississippi River and Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted, Gifford’s Chicago, New Orleans, and the highways and byways between offer us mesmerizing lives lost in the kaleidoscope of postwar America, in particular those of Roy’s adrift and disappointed mother and his hoodlum father.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gifford has exceeded in distilling the essence of childhood, evoking not only his young hero's innocence and trustingness, but also his resilient cheerfulness and active imagination." --Los Angeles Times

"Gifford's people are pure American; pure in their madness, in their evil; and to read about, pure pleasure." --Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio

"Barry Gifford is all the proof the world will ever need that a writer who listens with his heart is capable of telling anyone's story." --Armistead Maupin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

The author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages, BARRY GIFFORD writes distinctly American stories for millions of readers around the globe. For more information, visit www.BarryGifford.com.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583227628
• ISBN-13: 978-1583227626
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,513,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Going To Chicago", August 30, 2007

By 

Gerald Rosen "novelist" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Memories from a Sinking Ship [Double CD Audiobook] (Audio CD)

This collection of Barry Gifford's stories from his "Memories from a Sinking Ship," is a perfect introduction to Gifford's work and a must for his many fans. The double CD, excellently produced by Oscar Blucher, has Gifford reading his own work, a treat since we can hear the nuances of tone and timing and the continual dead pan humor straight from the author's mouth. The stories were always alive but now they seem almost to have been made to have been read aloud. Of all of Gifford's books, this is the best. We follow Gifford's alter-ego Roy as he attempts to grow up in a world that Frank Sinatra would have been perfectly at home in- gangsters, ballpayers, blues singers, hip hotels, Chicago, New Orleans, Havana, Miami, Key West, a world of loneliness, violence, and surprising tenderness. ("Say hello to Mr.[i.e. Meyer] Lansky, Roy.") Between driving around the country with his mother as she goes from one boyfriend to another, Roy sometimes attends school, but his education comes mostly from other arenas, movie theaters, hotel lobbies, Wrigley Field, cheap paperbacks and classic novels- Ernie Banks and Ernie Hemingway. Joseph Conrad and Joseph Cotten. In paintings from the middle-ages children are portrayed as miniature adults and Roy is treated this way by the adults in the stories. They confide in him, speak to him like an adult, and are forever leaving him waiting alone in theaters and hotel lobbies or at his grandma's rat infested house, while they go off to their crooked businesses and assignations. Yet somehow we see that Roy is going to make it out of this world, he will grow up on his own, and all these crazy and violent and touching street people will become a rich source of characters and life experiences for him (and perhaps for his stories if, like Gifford, he becomes a writer.) Gifford began by telling Chicago stories and we have reason to be grateful that he has come full circle, for, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, now he knows the place for the second time. He's an excellent reader as well as writer and all I can say is: Move over Nelson Algren, Barry Gifford is back in town.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tellin' of Roy, September 26, 2007

By 

Carol Collier (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Memories from a Sinking Ship [Double CD Audiobook] (Audio CD)

Most enjoyable! On a recent road trip, a friend and I listened to the entire 2-CD recording and put many a mile behind us while absorbed in the growing-up experiences of Roy, a kid in 1950s-era Chicago. People are what they are in Roy's world -- no apologies, just the facts, and Roy is watching every move. As the stories take Roy from age five to 17, what he observes and expeirences is sometimes sad; sometimes it's hilarious. It's told in Mr. Gifford's clean and direct style, and in a way that's unsentimental but essentially kind. If, as other reviewers have said, this book repeats material that is in other books (much of it autobiographical, it would seem), this is the one to get. Or maybe it's time to hear them in this context, where each story stands on its own, and at the same time all are linked in tone and chronology to form a single narrative.

Some authors are better than others at reading their own work aloud, and Barry Gifford is one of the good ones. He avoids putting an emotional spin on the material, in keeping with the unjudgmental way the stories are written. Instead, his calm, matter-of-fact tone lets the listener decide how to think about the stories.

The production is seamless. One thing I'm really curious about is the snippets of wonderful music beween the stories. They are most evocative and my friend and I agreed we'd like to hear a compilation of the complete songs. The liner notes say it's all original music from producer Oscar Bucher, so next I'll have to find some of his recordings.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential listening for fans of Barry Gifford's stories, August 21, 2007

By 

A Reader (Cape May, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memories from a Sinking Ship [Double CD Audiobook] (Audio CD)

I've been a fan of Barry Gifford's work since I was introduced to the beautiful "Wyoming" and "The Phantom Father" some years back. Both of these had a tone and tenderness I don't come across very often, though I read a lot of new fiction. Gifford's new collection, "Memories from a Sinking Ship", was just released this year, and if you liked the two earlier books, you'll be happy to slip back into Gifford's childhood world of 1940's and 50's America. As far as I know, this is the first time an audiobook of Gifford reading his stories has been released, but it's a great companion to the novel. For people familiar with the stories, it's a real treat to have, and if you're new to them, this is a unique introduction.

Memories from a Sinking Ship

Wyoming

Phantom Father: A Memoir

The Stars Above Veracruz

The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room: A Barry Gifford Reader