This is a mental health memoir (recommended by Melody Beattie); it is the memoir of an adult child. I’m also an adult child, although Louie is in at least two major ways different than me: he’s my parents’ age, and was raised working-class. In that sense it was broadening and good for me, but since I’m so different I’ll just comment briefly about myself.

Like I said, I’m an adult child; my mom’s an alcoholic. My dad’s larger-than-life, more vague in his instability; mom is more personal, more diagnosable. When that hyper-saccharine meter runs out, the angry drunk takes her place, you know. I guess most of the time she (over-)compensates.

This has had at least two important effects on me, one specific and one nonspecific. The general effect is that, since growing up school was my safe place and home was my unsafe place, I’ve subconsciously, permanently (?) divided my life into a safe-intellect sphere and an unsafe-relationships sphere. (Although I don’t study geometry, but basically other people.) Also, when I’m away from home in the late afternoon to early evening, I get this vague feeling of anxiety, related to this hidden idea like, ‘It’s time to go home from school now, but I don’t know what I’ll find at home when I get there.’ That’s an adult child—you go right back to that disempowered child place.

I don’t blame either of my parents for this, at least consciously; (although I do have kinda a hidden same-gender parent struggle with my dad, although I’d never willingly hurt him, you know). I just pray that one day my Higher Power, Jesus, will heal me completely, and until then, I’ll have interludes of peace and be able to live a (by my definition) productive, useful life.

…. In a forthcoming review (incidentally of a book by another Norwegian), I dwelt on the inner approval-seeking nun in me, my inappropriate self-assertion, grasping. I guess this book is the other side of the coin: peace. Louie reports having peace at his father’s grave; my relationship with my mother isn’t as set in stone as she’s fortunately still alive, but I guess I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t see her as something more than a drunk, and the source of the “bad blood” in my veins!

Entertaining and the story was very familiar. Down to a father that goes to work everyday-gaddamit- to doing the Prizeword Pete puzzle and sending them in on a postcard. Of course, Louie is just a few years older and grew up in St.Paul. I was about half way though and, unless he's written 2 books, I've read this before! ( )