![]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51bgSyTrQBL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[333,499],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51bgSyTrQBL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[231,346]})
I have known John since high school. I always appreciated his droll wit, his optimism, his energy, and his beautiful way with words. I often visit Amherst with my wife and children, and, whenever I do, I reminisce with them of chatting and laughing with a young and ebullient John Geoghegan; and then to me those happy hours, those golden days of youth, all come alive again.
Had I never met John, the captivating allure of his writing would have drawn me into an intimacy with his doubts and defeats, his courage and his victories, as if I had known him forever. This book is worth savoring. Once I started reading it at dawn yesterday, I did something I almost never do – I played hooky from work and let it captivate me from cover to cover.
John’s literary style, by itself, makes the book delightful. A great writer makes you unaware of his style, and John does that. You feel like you are walking with him not just through a film, but through a series of evocative paintings, limned with colors that range from the dull gray of a frowning monsoon to golden shafts of delight. John reminds me of Flaubert – you will not find the same adjective or phrase ever on the same page. This takes meticulous work, and its effect is to lure the reader fluently along, like a leaf spinning in a brook.
This is an autobiography so honest that sometimes you blush – as if seeing an innocent aspen stripped of its bark. But you admire John’s audacious candor. I have often contemplated writing my autobiography, believing that the trials I have endured would stagger humanity. But for sheer humanity staggering, my trials yield, tugging their forelocks in humble respect, to the trials that John Geoghegan has faced and overcome.
If, perhaps, the events John describes are unlike the events of your life, still you know you have had similar episodes that have evoked similar feelings. I am sure we all have had SLMs, as John defines Self Loathing Moments. The way John walks you, as if you were his twin, through his hopes and fears, pitfalls and climaxes, arouses introspection a resolve to be as good a person as you know he wished to bring himself to be.
John didn’t have good sibling relationships. But after reading this book, I feel I wish I could have been his brother. I think you will feel the same. And to feel that is a feeling worth having. Because if you believe there are too few brothers in this world, probably that is because you think there are too few people willing to share your burdens. But if you are willing to help shoulder the burdens of others, you will never, in this world or the next, run out of brothers.
I marked a few happy phrases in the book that particularly amused me:
• Turning around LucasArts was like changing a tire on a car going sixty miles an hour.
• She radiated a feeling of not-wanting-to-be-here like heat off asphalt.
• She barely weighed 100 pounds, most of it Makers Mark.
• My father practically invented the “f” word.
• For someone who wanted to be a good person, it’s amazing how bad I felt about myself.
So, here’s to you, old crumpet! Well done!
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: New Haven Publishing Ltd (May 7, 2018)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1912587068
- ISBN-13: 978-1912587063
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 19 customer reviews
-
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,273,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1474 in Special Needs Biographies
- #43993 in Memoirs (Books)
Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
