Customer Reviews:
 Brilliant book August 5, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Maybe it takes a poet like Burnside to open up this tricky relationship. With a lying, violent drunk of a father, most men walk away, stay away or do the opposite, face up with the same rage then spend a life as a carbon copy. At one stage, knife in hand, Burnside comes close, even starting into the same drowing, LSD instead of booze. But it's not the relationship, it's the act of writing it, that impresses me - a towering kind of compassion that tries to get beyond the anger and self-loathing, to find a point of human contact, something of dignity, in what can't be shed. There are fathers like this everywhere, just tweak the profile to fit. But few sons would or could deconstruct the damage to make something admirable of it. This memoir is a monument to the humanity of men, to the unhardening of hearts. Everyone should read it, preferably before having a son.
 a bit of a yawn June 10, 2006
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
I tend to buy fiction and memoir by poets because they usually produce concentrated, lyrical and richly written prose, but John Burnside's book had me turning over the pages to see if anything better, anything different, was coming next. I found it too meandering, working through the same material for too long. I'd have to say that the writing is lyrical, though for my tastes a little self-indulgent:the author entertaining himself more than his audience. Maybe my own pre-conceptions have resulted in this disappointment, but it's not often I decide to give up a third of the way through a book because I'm bored. I'll stick to his poetry from now on. I do recommend that.
 Childhood through a glass darkly April 4, 2006
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
For the most part this is an enjoyable read, boy can the author write? A true poet from humble and desolate origins who evokes his childhood so imaginatively. Read it and you find yourself comparing your own childhood and parental relationships. I felt the book was two chapters too long and did become a bit indulgent and tainted with self pity. This is a minor criticism though as self pity is as intoxicating as drug or alcohol addiction, which the author inevitably succumbs. There is no happy ending, but there is triumph. The power of the human spirit and this shines through from begining to end.
Beautiful February 28, 2006
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
If you only ever read one memoir in your life, make sure it's this one. None of the usual self-indulgence, but plenty of evocative, beautiful recollection of the difficult and fractured relationship between a boy and his father. Thoroughly recommend it.
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