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The Sarah Book
"McClanahan's prose is miasmic, dizzying, repetitive. A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. [McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon. . . . He is not a writer of half-measures. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger."— New York Times Book Review And so there was the falling and the falling and then the gasping for air--this love which is only a reminder of death--a spell cast to kill one another. Or perhaps it was from long ago in a play that wasn't a play anymore but an actual garden. And there was a man and there was a woman who were growing old together. And this was their only Let us be young again. I thought about the play and the words of that world.These were not the last lines of a play but words from long ago that someone spoke to a someone--words that sounded like this. I was saying this now.For wherever she was—there was my Eden. The Sarah Book is Scott McClanahan's continuation of the semi-autobiographical portrait he's been writing over the years about his life in West Virginia. This one is the portrait of his love there. Scott McClanahan is the author of Hill William , Crapalachia , and many more. He lives in West Virginia.
150 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 2015
About the author
Scott McClanahan
27 books474 followersScott McClanahan (born June 24, 1978) is an American writer, filmmaker, and martial artist. He lives in Beckley, West Virginia and is the author of eight books. His most recent book, The Sarah Book, was featured in Rolling Stone, Village Voice, and Playboy. NPR called the book "brave, triumphant and beautiful — it reads like a fever dream, and it feels like a miracle." McClanahan is also a co-founder of Holler Presents, a West Virginia-based production and small press company.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 456 reviews
March 28, 2017
Scott McClanahan’s The Sarah Book is a furious exhalation of love and hurt and hate and tenderness and anger. This is a chronicle of a couple coming together and breaking apart. There is courage in these pages because so much of what McClanahan details is ugly and desperate and raw--everything, food, drink, love, heartbreak, to excess. The writing is so intimate you want to reach into the book to save this man from himself but you can’t. That impossibility is what makes this book so memorable, so powerful.
July 16, 2024
There is a whiff of Charles Bukowski but on the quite amateurish side… The rudimentary narration often tends to turn fatuous…
The story left me indifferent… Reading it I was just wasting time.
Some lives are better than usual… And some lives are worse than usual… The life of the narrator belongs to the last category…
But to the protagonist his life is the best in the world… Up till a certain moment…
Sarah is his wife… They quarrel… They fight…
Now their life lies in ruins…
For losers there is no way but downhill.
The story left me indifferent… Reading it I was just wasting time.
Some lives are better than usual… And some lives are worse than usual… The life of the narrator belongs to the last category…
I was the best drunk driver in the world. I’d been doing it for years. One morning Sarah came home from work and went back to bed. I tucked her in tight and kissed her forehead and told her not to worry about a thing. I told her to drift off to dreamland and not worry about her night shift and everything would be better when she woke up.
But to the protagonist his life is the best in the world… Up till a certain moment…
Sarah is his wife… They quarrel… They fight…
Sarah said, “Telling me that my mouth looks like a scrunched up butthole is probably not the best way to cheer me up.” She told me to never use the word butthole in association with her face again.
Now their life lies in ruins…
For losers there is no way but downhill.
March 11, 2018
An account of a life and a relationship that is told with honest and unadorned passion. The narrator is a part of us all, the part that screws up and yet wants to do better. The pain is real, and though the humor is heartbreaking, it glows with a warmth that promises a future.
March 26, 2017
This is my favorite book by my favorite writer. Amazing.
October 29, 2017
I have read everything Scott McClanahan has published, and enjoyed Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place and Hill William. Most of his writings feel like memoir but are labeled as fiction, and I can only assume this comes from a connection to the long tradition of the accomplished telling of tall tales that perpetuates throughout the West Virginia zone of Appalachia.
The Sarah Book is no different in that sense, although instead of moving throughout a host of characters in a family or in a community, it is very much focused on Scott and Sarah, who are getting divorced. Scott is the narrator and is crass, frustrating, and pretty pitiful, but somehow in the writing it is easy to be on his side anyway. Whether it is Scott the narrator or Scott the actual person/author, he is able to speak so honestly, it manages to work. The writing itself feels like the author playing with the reader, or himself (haha, pretty sure he would approve of that.) For instance, within the story of how he met Sarah, he deliberately uses a cliche, acknowledged he is using a cliche, mocks himself for using a cliche, but yet it feels like they are the only words he has that can come close to understanding what has just occurred. And as the reader, I give him a pass.
The Sarah Book is no different in that sense, although instead of moving throughout a host of characters in a family or in a community, it is very much focused on Scott and Sarah, who are getting divorced. Scott is the narrator and is crass, frustrating, and pretty pitiful, but somehow in the writing it is easy to be on his side anyway. Whether it is Scott the narrator or Scott the actual person/author, he is able to speak so honestly, it manages to work. The writing itself feels like the author playing with the reader, or himself (haha, pretty sure he would approve of that.) For instance, within the story of how he met Sarah, he deliberately uses a cliche, acknowledged he is using a cliche, mocks himself for using a cliche, but yet it feels like they are the only words he has that can come close to understanding what has just occurred. And as the reader, I give him a pass.
January 30, 2019
The Sarah Book. Well. The prose startles, not in a flashy way but in a lovely way, like the feeling when you're watching a maple tree on a windy day and you really start to notice all those greens. The writing is delicate, in other words, and surprisingly beautiful--surprising because it's telling the story of a divorce that is so wrenching and painful that the book kept taking me to the edge of wanting to stop reading.
But then just when I was most strongly thinking "ok, I can't read this any longer" the author arrived at an anecdote so hopeful--of a woman who experienced enduring, abundant love in her married life--that my feelings about the divorcing couple resolved into something very rich and forgiving. The anecdote is only a few pages long but it arrived at a perfect place in the narrative and made everything okay again, in a way that was mysterious and powerful to me.
I don't understand how it works but I'm glad to have read it. Twice.
But then just when I was most strongly thinking "ok, I can't read this any longer" the author arrived at an anecdote so hopeful--of a woman who experienced enduring, abundant love in her married life--that my feelings about the divorcing couple resolved into something very rich and forgiving. The anecdote is only a few pages long but it arrived at a perfect place in the narrative and made everything okay again, in a way that was mysterious and powerful to me.
I don't understand how it works but I'm glad to have read it. Twice.
June 28, 2017
This is the best book I've ever read. It's the saddest, and the funniest, the most living and dead too. I work with a lot of guys who don't read books very often, and every once in a while someone will see me reading at work and ask for a book to read ... this is the one I'll say from now on.
January 27, 2020
A compulsively readable train-wreck life story. A book of laughter and pain. The up-front, hard-hitting prose of a writer disregarding the tropes and guidelines they teach you in English 101, reinventing rhythmic emotions on the page in the language of his tormented psyche.
The no-good narrator, down-on-his luck, utterly divorceable, may not arouse much sympathy in many of us. A self-saboteur extraordinaire, McClanahan, the main character of his own novel, comes to frequent forks in the road. Typically, he chooses the rocky, hellishly nihilistic path. The Beatrice of this journey, Sarah, equally flawed but not quite as destructive as the author's fictive offspring, acts as a point of reference whereby we can gauge the m.c.'s madness and desperation.
There's very little description, much comedy and plenty of witty interlocution. This all makes for a gallivanting pace and a story that sticks in the memory like a wacky dream. While it lacks in technical brilliance, the story is what matters. You won't be able to look away.
The no-good narrator, down-on-his luck, utterly divorceable, may not arouse much sympathy in many of us. A self-saboteur extraordinaire, McClanahan, the main character of his own novel, comes to frequent forks in the road. Typically, he chooses the rocky, hellishly nihilistic path. The Beatrice of this journey, Sarah, equally flawed but not quite as destructive as the author's fictive offspring, acts as a point of reference whereby we can gauge the m.c.'s madness and desperation.
There's very little description, much comedy and plenty of witty interlocution. This all makes for a gallivanting pace and a story that sticks in the memory like a wacky dream. While it lacks in technical brilliance, the story is what matters. You won't be able to look away.
July 19, 2019
So, I’m the only one in the world who hated this book then?
I hated this damn book so much that my head almost melted. I hated Scott. I hated Sarah even more. I have no idea why anyone would find either one of them even slightly interesting. Apparently I’m supposed to be really impressed by McClanahan's prose style, but to me, it sounded like a C student trying to do an impression of Holden Caulfield.
I would have thrown the damn book across the room by page 40 or so, but I forged ahead because of all the ecstatic reviews here and elsewhere. Don’t be like me. Do something more productive with your time, like, I don’t know, making an army of dough soldiers and then eating it. Folding a bunch of bananas. Anything other than reading this book.
I hated this damn book so much that my head almost melted. I hated Scott. I hated Sarah even more. I have no idea why anyone would find either one of them even slightly interesting. Apparently I’m supposed to be really impressed by McClanahan's prose style, but to me, it sounded like a C student trying to do an impression of Holden Caulfield.
I would have thrown the damn book across the room by page 40 or so, but I forged ahead because of all the ecstatic reviews here and elsewhere. Don’t be like me. Do something more productive with your time, like, I don’t know, making an army of dough soldiers and then eating it. Folding a bunch of bananas. Anything other than reading this book.
January 10, 2024
This book made me believe in love but then not believe in it but again believe in it but then not believe in it anymore.
October 6, 2017
I don't know how to review a Scott McClanahan novel. It's like trying to review a mountain range or the Grand Canyon. "It's big and colorful and when the lighting is right, you get a feeling of vertigo and wonder and God." Something like that. As someone who's been through a divorce, this one resonates. It's not a cartoon divorce. It's the real fucking thing. Messy, and full of love and full of pain. It's sad, but I laughed out loud in coffee shops and learned a lot about Wal-Mart. Get it & then get another copy and give it to a friend & then get a third copy in case Axl Rose sues New York Tyrant (did u guys get permission for that cover???) Essential summer reading, etc etc etc. 🔥🤘❤️
February 14, 2018
A wonderfully melancholy story about heartbreak and humanity and all the messiness in between. The emotional revelations in this come so rapidly, and this painfully sad story is so imbued with humor, that I feel like you’d have to have a soul made of stone to not connect with it. Stuff like this should be required reading.
August 12, 2017
The Sarah Book is undeniably genuine as it relays a sad, funny, brutal, and honest story of love and divorce. The difference when comparing this to McClanahan's previous output is that he is the focus here, as opposed to other characters from his life, yet he maintains his trademark style that resonates so strongly. This book was over before I knew it.
September 20, 2018
Easily one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Reads like some illiterate incel wanna be poet’s shit livejournal blog. He writes about a lot of dead pets and I wish someone would run him over or euthanize him instead.
May 10, 2017
That McClanahan guy was as great as advertised. I had a great time with THE SARAH BOOK if you consider that a fundamentally non-comedic book about divorce can be any pleasant. I mean, it has funny moments but it's not meant to make fun of divorce or anything. It treats it more seriously than most fiction I've ever read.
There aren't any love stories I'm aware of that start on the verge of a breakup and go through with it than I'm aware of. On the surface, THE SARAH BOOK can seem like another self-indulgent postmodern novel about a man adrift, but it is much smarter than that. It does start that way, but when McClanahan starts backtracking and narrating chapters about Sarah without him even being present, her influences on his life and his love for her begins emerging and you start noticing her absence as much as her presence, like McClanahan does.
THE SARAH BOOK is definitely postmodern, though. McClanahan continuously breaks the fourth wall. Inserts himself as a character and narrates the story at the same time. It's a beautiful, angry and self-aware book about what it takes to keep someone you love by your side. Definitely an emotional experience.
There aren't any love stories I'm aware of that start on the verge of a breakup and go through with it than I'm aware of. On the surface, THE SARAH BOOK can seem like another self-indulgent postmodern novel about a man adrift, but it is much smarter than that. It does start that way, but when McClanahan starts backtracking and narrating chapters about Sarah without him even being present, her influences on his life and his love for her begins emerging and you start noticing her absence as much as her presence, like McClanahan does.
THE SARAH BOOK is definitely postmodern, though. McClanahan continuously breaks the fourth wall. Inserts himself as a character and narrates the story at the same time. It's a beautiful, angry and self-aware book about what it takes to keep someone you love by your side. Definitely an emotional experience.
April 2, 2017
raw, honest and all scott. a downhill somersaulting of true life
August 16, 2017
If Scott McClanahan wrote a book every week, I'd read every one of them, probably twice
October 9, 2018
This book brought part of me back from the dead. I hadn’t stopped caring about the loss of the part, it’d just been so long since I’d been presented with an opportunity to use it. So it wasn’t really dead. “You’re dead,” though, I’d tell it when it’d start moving around, “it’s easier this way.”
That part of me is my heart. More specifically, it’s the part of my heart where hope lives. Hope for me and you and all the people out there and who have ever been and ever will be.
I‘ve always had this silly aversion to the term “feeling alive”—living is what I am, not how I feel, right? How can you feel the condition of your being?
Well, you can start by reading The Sarah Book.
That part of me is my heart. More specifically, it’s the part of my heart where hope lives. Hope for me and you and all the people out there and who have ever been and ever will be.
I‘ve always had this silly aversion to the term “feeling alive”—living is what I am, not how I feel, right? How can you feel the condition of your being?
Well, you can start by reading The Sarah Book.
August 2, 2017
Scott is one of our best writers, there's no doubt. I'm caring less and less for confessional/memoir type fiction or whatever you call it, but I can see where and how Scott laces his life with storytelling techniques. It's not something many of these kinds of writers do very well. One other note on the style Scott lays down in this one: The entire book can be read aloud in an oral storytelling form. Test it, read a few paragraphs aloud. It's impressive he kept this style in place over the course of an entire novel. Overall, not as strong as Crapalachia but a fine outing.
October 30, 2017
This is a painful, and sometimes regrettably humorous tale of love and loss. It hurts. It hurts a whole lot, but I think this is a story everyone deserves.
October 3, 2022
Awww shit.
September 2, 2017
Here’s a little sermon on the Art of writing, a little something that’s been on my mind. Years ago, I used to run a Workshop out the Coliseum in Whitby. A group of aspiring writer’s would come together and bring their stories, poems and things, and I’d say nice things about their work, because I was really bad at running a workshop. Even the lousy stories, and there were many, many of those, would get a proverbial thumbs up. I limited myself to correcting grammar, technical things like that. There was this one guy who came along with little pieces of stories, sketches really, and they were without exception in the Science Fiction/High Fantasy genre and, man, they were SUPER genre. All the tropes and beats were hit, and they were fairly bland, nondescript pieces. The kind of things a million people are currently vomiting out through Createspace et al. This guy had grown up in, a, let’s say, troubled part of the world. We’d sometimes go to the bar across the road for a beer afterwards and he’d tell these stories of his life there and they were gripping. Stories of scratching a living from nothing, of gang wars, of brutal repression and violence, but also of hope among the corrugated steel, of street parties and music played around the burning hulks of Police cars. One day, he said to me, “I’m finding it real hard to write, I have nothing to say.”
I said to him how great the stories he told were, that his life, his past, the land he’d grow up with, that was his place of power, that’s what he should be capturing in his work. That he had this whole world in his heart that we all wanted to hear about , and that would fade and vanish if he let it go. That he was a natural storyteller, and the characters in the stories he’d tell us about his life were vigorous enough to command anybody’s attention. This was stuff nobody else was writing, that nobody else COULD write. “That’s what you should do, man.”
He smiled and said, “You know what? You’re right.”
The guy didn’t come back for a few weeks and when he did, he carried this folder filled with paper. “I’ve been writing,” he said, “the dry spell has been broken.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, “what’s it about?”
“It’s about these Elves, you see…….”
I feel like I’ve been ignoring my own advice for a couple of years now, chasing my own stories about (metaphorically speaking) ‘Elves’, because there’s a market for them, because it’s the easy option, because I found I could turn them out like a damn butcher’s machine turns out sausages. I guess this is a roundabout way of saying I just read Scott McClanahan’s ‘Sarah Book’, and it’s turned my views on a few things upside down. It’s so urgent, so well-wrought and powerful and so absolutely authentic that I look at the things I’ve written over the last year and so many months and they seem hollow as Easter Eggs. There were reasons I wanted to write, 20 years ago when I started, and they’ve been buried under the ‘Industry’ side of things. The chasing of sales and the marketing and the snotty receptionists at Big City Agencies and the late nights churning out meticulously, soullessly plotted narratives while the real thing, the fire, puttered and burned dangerously low. McClanahan’s prose, seemingly so simple, so disarmingly plain, is a force, an unstoppable current, something that comes from the Earth that shaped him; it’s refreshing in it’s absolute scouring honesty. You feel how they must have felt in Old Testament times when some soul came out of the desert to the city gates and spoke the truth with such gravity the walls came tumbling down and the city folk looked at their jewellery and court poetry and sophistry and saw for the first time that they’d lost themselves.
I said to him how great the stories he told were, that his life, his past, the land he’d grow up with, that was his place of power, that’s what he should be capturing in his work. That he had this whole world in his heart that we all wanted to hear about , and that would fade and vanish if he let it go. That he was a natural storyteller, and the characters in the stories he’d tell us about his life were vigorous enough to command anybody’s attention. This was stuff nobody else was writing, that nobody else COULD write. “That’s what you should do, man.”
He smiled and said, “You know what? You’re right.”
The guy didn’t come back for a few weeks and when he did, he carried this folder filled with paper. “I’ve been writing,” he said, “the dry spell has been broken.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, “what’s it about?”
“It’s about these Elves, you see…….”
I feel like I’ve been ignoring my own advice for a couple of years now, chasing my own stories about (metaphorically speaking) ‘Elves’, because there’s a market for them, because it’s the easy option, because I found I could turn them out like a damn butcher’s machine turns out sausages. I guess this is a roundabout way of saying I just read Scott McClanahan’s ‘Sarah Book’, and it’s turned my views on a few things upside down. It’s so urgent, so well-wrought and powerful and so absolutely authentic that I look at the things I’ve written over the last year and so many months and they seem hollow as Easter Eggs. There were reasons I wanted to write, 20 years ago when I started, and they’ve been buried under the ‘Industry’ side of things. The chasing of sales and the marketing and the snotty receptionists at Big City Agencies and the late nights churning out meticulously, soullessly plotted narratives while the real thing, the fire, puttered and burned dangerously low. McClanahan’s prose, seemingly so simple, so disarmingly plain, is a force, an unstoppable current, something that comes from the Earth that shaped him; it’s refreshing in it’s absolute scouring honesty. You feel how they must have felt in Old Testament times when some soul came out of the desert to the city gates and spoke the truth with such gravity the walls came tumbling down and the city folk looked at their jewellery and court poetry and sophistry and saw for the first time that they’d lost themselves.
November 24, 2017
I have a car. I was listening to this book while driving my car. My wife was with me. “What's that?” she asked. I told her it was an audio book. An audio book called The Sarah Book. My wife said, “It’s an audio book?” “Yes,” I said. “It’s called The Sarah Book.” “It sounds like it’s written by a third-grader,” my wife said. “It isn’t,” I replied. “Well, it’s the way kids in my third-grade class would tell stories,” she said. “Just one thing after another. It’s very repetitive.” “Well,” I replied, “It’s actually a very well-reviewed book. And it’s short. I’m trying to keep an open mind about it. Everyone loves it.” Everyone but my wife.
Then the author continued reading in his mesmerizing drawl. It wasn’t one of the good parts. I had heard some good parts, but this wasn’t one. This part was about an old dog, and I couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be humorous, pathetic or ironic. Or whether it mattered. I had thought some parts were poetic. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was right. Maybe my feelings are just a metaphor for life, and we’re all trapped inside this book review. All of life is just one big book review, and we don’t even know if the author is reliable or not. Did he really take his kids on a joyride while drunk? I don't think we can ever be sure.
So I need you to forgive me. Also, I know I’m using the word “I” a lot. I’m just warning you: if I were you, and I purchased this book, I would get used to it. Anyway, I know that all is lost. Everything we love will be lost. So what does it matter?
PS- I'm sorry to have posted this review under the paperback version of The Sarah Book. But there is no listing yet on Goodreads for the audible.com version read by the author. I'm so very, very sorry.
Then the author continued reading in his mesmerizing drawl. It wasn’t one of the good parts. I had heard some good parts, but this wasn’t one. This part was about an old dog, and I couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be humorous, pathetic or ironic. Or whether it mattered. I had thought some parts were poetic. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was right. Maybe my feelings are just a metaphor for life, and we’re all trapped inside this book review. All of life is just one big book review, and we don’t even know if the author is reliable or not. Did he really take his kids on a joyride while drunk? I don't think we can ever be sure.
So I need you to forgive me. Also, I know I’m using the word “I” a lot. I’m just warning you: if I were you, and I purchased this book, I would get used to it. Anyway, I know that all is lost. Everything we love will be lost. So what does it matter?
PS- I'm sorry to have posted this review under the paperback version of The Sarah Book. But there is no listing yet on Goodreads for the audible.com version read by the author. I'm so very, very sorry.
March 6, 2018
Love, gut punches, tender moments, brutal stabs to the heart
I went into this blind, because I’ve loved everything I’ve read by McClanahan. Honestly, if I’d read the synopsis and wasn’t already into his stuff, I would have skipped it. Relationship stories aren’t my thing. This one, though. Wow. This is the kind of book that screws up the already inadequate Goodreads/Amazon rating system. It makes me want to go back and change most of my 5-star reviews, because really, how can any of them compare? The Sarah Book is incredible, unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I laughed, I cried. My heart was warmed and then torn out of my chest and stomped on. The Sarah Book is hilarious, insightful, and utterly devastating.
Scott McClanahan’s style is simple on the surface, but effortlessly poetic and never comes across as pretentious. There’s always a brutal honesty that is sometimes uncomfortable and often laugh-out-loud funny. It flows quickly, much like the fast-talking readings I’ve seen him do on YouTube. When I first discovered his work, I read every piece I could find and was done in a week. This book, too, was finished before I was ready.
The narrator’s name is Scott McClanahan, so I spent a lot of the book wondering how much, if any, of it was true. It doesn’t really matter, though. It’s all true. If you’re an adult, you’ve been Scott or you’ve known him. Maybe you were in a relationship with him for a while and then it ended.
Most of my favorite books I’d hesitate to recommend to many people. My tastes aren’t necessarily mainstream. I think almost everyone could get something out of The Sarah Book. It’s beautiful and tragic and so damn real. Read this.
I went into this blind, because I’ve loved everything I’ve read by McClanahan. Honestly, if I’d read the synopsis and wasn’t already into his stuff, I would have skipped it. Relationship stories aren’t my thing. This one, though. Wow. This is the kind of book that screws up the already inadequate Goodreads/Amazon rating system. It makes me want to go back and change most of my 5-star reviews, because really, how can any of them compare? The Sarah Book is incredible, unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I laughed, I cried. My heart was warmed and then torn out of my chest and stomped on. The Sarah Book is hilarious, insightful, and utterly devastating.
Scott McClanahan’s style is simple on the surface, but effortlessly poetic and never comes across as pretentious. There’s always a brutal honesty that is sometimes uncomfortable and often laugh-out-loud funny. It flows quickly, much like the fast-talking readings I’ve seen him do on YouTube. When I first discovered his work, I read every piece I could find and was done in a week. This book, too, was finished before I was ready.
The narrator’s name is Scott McClanahan, so I spent a lot of the book wondering how much, if any, of it was true. It doesn’t really matter, though. It’s all true. If you’re an adult, you’ve been Scott or you’ve known him. Maybe you were in a relationship with him for a while and then it ended.
Most of my favorite books I’d hesitate to recommend to many people. My tastes aren’t necessarily mainstream. I think almost everyone could get something out of The Sarah Book. It’s beautiful and tragic and so damn real. Read this.
August 27, 2018
I think if I’d read this when my marriage ended and I got divorced I would’ve cried with fear at how sad and terrible everything can be. But time puts distance in so many ways between you and The Terrible Thing, whatever it might be, so recently when someone asked me, “What’s the most embarrassing thing your husband ever did?” I said, “You mean apart from ask for a divorce?” and everyone laughed and I carry on like this a lot and it’s like I got a sitcom divorce and not a real life divorce, with real life pain and misery and the long slow hauling yourself out of the pit. So I see everything now with ironic detachment, which is pretty much the worst, because I am afraid of those extreme feelings.
I have no idea if Scott McClanahan is afraid of his strong feelings. He’s certainly not afraid to write about them. And he’s funny, but without ironic detachment and he faces all the awful feelings head on. Everyone should read this book. Everyone. Because it’s a book where you truly know you’re not alone with your pain. Except you are, in the moment, we all are. But this book gets something through: everyone is a mess, everyone is doubled over with their grief and horror. And if we’re lucky, some of them get to write about it in this amazing exquisite way and we are never the same again.
I have no idea if Scott McClanahan is afraid of his strong feelings. He’s certainly not afraid to write about them. And he’s funny, but without ironic detachment and he faces all the awful feelings head on. Everyone should read this book. Everyone. Because it’s a book where you truly know you’re not alone with your pain. Except you are, in the moment, we all are. But this book gets something through: everyone is a mess, everyone is doubled over with their grief and horror. And if we’re lucky, some of them get to write about it in this amazing exquisite way and we are never the same again.
August 23, 2022
A phenomenally painful and powerful autobiographical novel about the birth and death of a marriage.
McClanahan is like Willy Vlautin or Charles Bukowski, infused with a dash of Richard Brautigan's wit and turn of phrase.
Written with clear-eyed honesty, this is a candid narrative where all of McClanahan's pain and shame is fully on show, along with the hilarity and absurdity that comes with breakdown.
It's truly an unforgettable book that serves as a great tribute to the reasons we keep trying in life, and the reasons we fail. It will haunt me for a long time.
McClanahan is like Willy Vlautin or Charles Bukowski, infused with a dash of Richard Brautigan's wit and turn of phrase.
Written with clear-eyed honesty, this is a candid narrative where all of McClanahan's pain and shame is fully on show, along with the hilarity and absurdity that comes with breakdown.
It's truly an unforgettable book that serves as a great tribute to the reasons we keep trying in life, and the reasons we fail. It will haunt me for a long time.
January 30, 2024
Can’t stop crying I never wanted this to end. Might just be my favorite book of all time. starting it over again right now. Beautiful funny smart stupid gross sad lovely story about love and how to deal with loss and how to be a real person on earth or anywhere else
September 21, 2018
Shitty white man wants you to feel bad for him because he knows he's a shitty white man but you don't because he's a shitty white man.
November 23, 2020
What an amazing book this is. I cried with it, and felt all the pains. It is a masterpiece of love and pain. And loneliness.
January 14, 2019
Heartbreaking. Unbearably true. Distinct. Unforgettable.
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